do my reading home work

ZAHA RADm ARCHITECTS, BEUING

CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT COM­

PETITION PROPOSAL, 2010. STUDIES

OF FORMAL MUTATIONS. ALL IMAGES

COURTESY ZAHA RADIO ARCHITECTS.

Patri!? Schumacher

Editor's Note: This text is excerpted from a lecture Patri!? Schumacher gave in Los Angeles at SCI-Arc in September 2010.

Pararnetricisrn And the Autopoiesis Of Architecture

It's great to be at SCI-Arc. I had two great days to see what's going on here, and I think what I have to say speaks, to a certain extent, critically to what is going on here. The lecture is a variation on a lecture I have been giving this year. I've added an element that relates to my forthcoming book, The Autopoiesis ofArchitecture, which is an attempt to create a comprehensive and unified theory of architecture, and which features parametricism as the last chapter of volume two. The argument is that parametric ism continues the autopoiesis of architecture, which is the self-referential, closed system of communications that constitutes architecture as a discourse in contemporary society. The book is in two volumes. Volume one, a new framework for architecture, is coming out in December [released December 7,2010] and then a new agenda for architecture appears in volume two, probably four to six months later. It is difficult to summarize, but just to raise a bit of curiosity about this, I will make an argument for a comprehensive unified theory is of interest.

A comprehensive unified theory of and for architecture is important if you are trying to lead 400 architects across a multiplicity of projects, touching all aspects and components of contemporary architecture in terms of programmatic agendas and at all scales. With a unified theory one is better prepared to manage the different designs, designers, and approaches that run in different directions, fight each other, contradict each other, and stand in each other's way. I am also teaching at a number of schools, the Architectural Association Design Research Laboratory [AA DRL] being one of them, an expanding group that is now 150 to 160 students. Here again there is an issue in trying to converge efforts so that people don't trip over each other and get in each other's way. The need for a unified theory is first of all to eliminate contradic­ tions within one's own efforts - so one doesn't stand in one's own way all the time. If you go around from jury to jury, from project to project, you one thing here, another thing there, and further ideas come to mind; by the third occasion

63

you might be saying and doing things that don't gel, don't cohere. You might be developing ideas about architecture's societal function. You might be concerned with what is architecture, what is not architecture, to demarcate against art, engineering, etc. You might think of yourself as pan of something like an avant-garde and try to develop a theory of the avant-garde. Or think about design media, the role of media theory; about design processes and design process theory. You wonder about aesthetic values and whether the notion of beauty is still relevant. Or you try to develop a theory of beauty, an aesthetic theory. And you're concerned with phenomenology. Then there's perception - how do you perceive space, subjects in space? Then it goes on. The concept of style: Is it still relevant? Then you try to develop a theory of style. You try to read the history of architecture in a cer­ tain fashion ... and you do all this to position yourself with respect to contemporary architecture. These are the compo­ nents that different authors, different thinkers, might un­ dertake and spend half their careers on. Some of us might do two or three of these. At a certain stage it makes sense to ask whether these things can be brought into a coherent system of ideas where they forge a kind of trajectory that has to do with guiding practice. You can only lead a coherent practice with a deep and comprehensive theory.

No one has attempted a unified theory for architecture since Le Corbusier, and perhaps the book The International Sryie, and perhaps the work of Christian Norberg-Schultz. But for a long time it has been nearly taboo even to start thinking about such an idea. I find it very interesting that the concept of style, like the International Style, returned after it had been abandoned by most of the early modernists. Modernism - the International Style - dominated the trans­ formation of our built environment for 50 years and gener­ ated an unprecedented level of material freedom and plenty, aligned, of course, with the growth of industrial civilization. In the 1970s it became clear that the principles and values that had defined modern architecture for half a century were no longer the principles and values through which architecture could facilitate the further progress of world civilization. Modernism experienced a massive crisis, was abandoned. Everything had to be questioned, rethought, which led to free rein, freewheeling, browsing, and brainstorming. This also brought forth a new cast of characters, a sense of pluralism, and a sense that all systems (grand narratives) are bankrupt. That doesn't mean that aU attempts to cohere a unified theory are to be dismissed forever. After a period of questioning,

brainstorming, and freewheeling experimentation, new pro­ visional conclusions must be drawn, decisions must be made on how to move a project forward in a clear way. The neces­ sity of this cannot be denied.

So, to raise some curiosity about this idea, let me discuss the chapter structure of volume one. After the introduction there is a chapter on architecture theory, which is put for­ ward as an important, necessary component of architecture. It actually marks the inception and origin of architecture with Alberti 500 years ago in the early Renaissance. That's where I say architecture starts. Everything before that was not architecture, it was some form of traditional building. Most of the book is an attempt to observe architecture and its communication structures, key principles, distinctions, methods, practices. It's a comprehensive discourse analysis of the discipline, and from that develops a normative agenda of selecting, or filtering out, the pertinent tendencies, the permanent communication structures, and the variable communication structures that have been evolving. All this is elaborated in order to forge a statement and position on how to move forward. To make this more digestible I extract poignant theses from the theory, and I will just read a few.

Thesis one is that the phenomenon of architecture can be most adequately grasped if it is analyzed as an autonomous network or auto poetic system of communications. So I am not talking about architecture as simply a collection of build­ ings. I'm not talking about it as a profession or a practice. I'm not talking about it only as an academic discipline. Rather, I am concerned with how all of these activities are joined to­ gether to create a system of communications.

Thesis four states there is no architecture without theory. Thesis six contains the notion that resolute autonomy, or what I call self-referential closure, is a prerequisite of archi­ tecture's effectiveness in an increasingly complex and dy­ namic social environment. The notion of a self-enclosed autonomy of the discipline means that we as architects, and as a discourse as a whole, need to define the purposes that guide us, the conceptual structures and modes of arguments that are legitimate and meaningful to us, the tasks to focus on and how to pursue them. The kind of network of communi­ cations that we constitute determines this. In contemporary society there is no other authority we can appeal to which would instruct architecture with respect to the built envi­ ronment and its evolution. Neither politics, nor clients, nor science, nor morality. We have the burden as a collective to determine the way forward. That's what I mean by autonomy

64 Winter 2011 65

- the autonomy to adapt to an environment and to stay rel­ evant in it. And that is not

I also discovered that only by differentiating the avant­ garde as a specific subsystem can contemporary architecture actively participate in the evolution of I believe that institutions like SCI-Arc and the AA, which seem to be one step removed from the burdens of state-of-the-art solutions here and now, are a condition for archi­ tecture to rethink and upgrade itself continuously.

Thesis ten suggests that in a society without a control center, architecture must regulate itself and maintain its own mechanisms of evolution in order to remain adaptable in an ecology of evolving societal subsystems. These subsystems constitute society according to the notion of society underly­ ing this discourse. There can be no external determination imposed upon architecture, neither by political bodies nor by paying clients, except in the negative, trivial sense of disrup­ tion. Yes, they can stop your project. Maybe they can clamp down and deny permission, but they obviously cannot con­ structively intervene. The same occurs with other so-called subsystems of society, like the legal system, science, the arts, etc. They are all self-regulating discourses.

Thesis 16 suggests that avant-garde styles are designed research programs. IfI talk about style or use the concept of style I am not necessarily alluding to all its connotations. I am making an effort to redefine style as a valid category of contemporary discourse, because to just let it drop to the side would be an impoverishment of contemporary discourse. The notion of style is one of the few ideas that is meaningful beyond the confines of architectural discourse. For the world at large it's the primary category of understanding architec­ ture, and we need to engage with that. All avant-garde styles are design research programs. They begin as progressive design research programs, and parametricism is now in that phase. They mature to become productive dogmas, which happened with modernism. And there is productivity in the ability to routinize insights for rapid dissemination and ex­ ecution. And obviously all styles end up as degenerate dogmas. That is their trajectory.

Thesis 17: Aesthetic values encapsulate a condensed collective within useful dogmas. Their inherent inertia implies that values progress via revolution rather than evolution. Aesthetic values obviously shift with historical progress. You need to relearn your aesthetic sensibilities to

for moral sensibilities. I am arguing, for instance, that mini­ malist sensibilities have to be fought and suppressed because they don't allow you to adapt to contemporary life.

Thesis 19: Architecture depends on its medium enor­ mously. Parametricism is also a product of the development of the medium of architecture. Architectural communication is happening primarily within the medium of the drawing, becoming the digital model, becoming the parametric model, and the network of scripts. Architecture depends on its me­ dium in the same way the economy depends on money and politics depends on power. These specialized media sustain a new plane of communication that depends on the of the medium, which remains able to inflationary tendencies. If you overdo make-believe

reality, there is a but without this

comoel1lng medium you would never be able to convince or anybody to project complex, large-scale

find those that are productive and viable and that allow you to exist and be oroductive in contemporary life. The same goes

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projects into a distant future, or to coalesce the enormous amount of resources and people needed to support and believe

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ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS, BEIJING

CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT COMPE­

TITION PROPOSAL, 2010.

ZAHA RADID ARCHITECTS, BEIJING

CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT COMPE­

TITION PROPOSAL, 2010. STUDIES

OF FORMAL MUTATIONS.

in a coordinated effort. Architecture, of course, with its increasing complexity of tasks and agendas, also needs to upgrade its medium, just as money did. Money is no longer just coinage; it became paper money, became electronic money. Administrative power is also benefiting from the microelectronic revolution in terms of administering, controlling, connecting, and directing. Each of these social subsystems has a specialized social medium. All these media evolve together with the tasks they take on.

One more thesis, Thesis 23: Radical innovation presupposes newness. Newness is first of all just otherness. The new is produced by blind mechanisms rather than creative thought. Strategic selection is required to secure communicative conti­ nuity and adaptive pertinence.

*** Now I want to talk a little about the theoretical sources that allow me to work out a comprehensive unified theory of ar­ chitecture with confidence and conviction. To do that, one of the key things you have to grasp is the societal function, or the raison d'&tre, of architecture in the world why it came into being, why it took certain forms and moved toward certain developments, and what the best bet is for staying relevant and continuing to play an important role. This requires some sense of the overall social process and its workings. For the first decade of my architectural life, beginning in the early

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1980s, I looked at Marxism and historical materialism as the kind of overarching theoretical edifice through which to think what is going on in architecture. When I went into ar­ chitecture at the University of Stuttgart, I was joining the late modern period. People were still convinced of modernism. There was still hi-tech - Norman Foster and Richard Rogers were still the prominent going tendency. I was into it, but one or two years into my studies, I discovered postmodernism in the writing of Robert Venturi and in charles jencks's The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. And so I changed, and, in fact, the university changed. And a few years later there was a radical shift to deconstructivism. It seemed that in the 1980s, every two or three years there was a revolution in style, in paradigm, in outlook, and in values. I think that period left a mark on some people's general philosophical outlook. Soon there was a pluralism of styles. It seems that since then the kind of monolithic, cumulative trajectory of modernism is a thing of a past era and that we're now living in a world of continuous flux and splintering, fragmenting trajectories and ever-changing values, but that it is a historical illusion.

In my search for a credible theory of architecture and theory of contemporary society I discovered Niklas Luh­ mann's social systems theory. Luhmann's fundamental prem­ ise is that all social phenomena or events depend on systems of communication. He steps back from Marxist materialism to a kind of abstraction, but one that I think is plausible. You always have to abstract to theorize. To focus on communica­ tions is interesting, because if you think about everybody's life process - where the bottlenecks are, where the crux of your problems is, your issues - you are always coping with social systems, your ability to communicate within them, to find a position within them. Even the physical world only gets to you through systems of communication. For example, if you're struck by illness your main problem will be whether you have health insurance, whether you have people you can communicate with, whether you are embedded in a system of communications with rights and the ability to speak. If you want to traverse physical space your issue will be whether you have money, an airline ticket. The bottleneck will be traffic, other people's attempts to travel, security controls at airports, etc. You are protected if you have the ability to buy a hotel room, an apartment, switch on the heater, pay the bills. Com­ munication structures everyone's interface with the physical world and our relations with each other. If you think about architecture as an inverted commerce, we construct projects only through communications, whether through drawings,

69Winter 2011

contracts, phone calls, emails: communications, upon com­ munications, upon communications - that's what runs this world. Everything goes through that needle's eye.

Luhmann's philosophy of history differs from both Marx's and Hegel's. I insist that an architectural theorist possess a philosophy of history, a theory of historical development. Luhmann looks at history in terms of modes of social or soci­ etal differentiation - the mark of epochs. Today societies are organized in terms of functional differentiation. This is what Luhmann calls functionally differentiated society, composed of the great function systems of society, themselves parallel systems that co-evolve as autonomous discourses, systems of communication like politics, law, economics, science, educa­ tion, health, mass media, and art. A politician has no way of influencing your voice in terms of scientific truth, just as issues of law have nothing to say with respect to scientific knowledge. The economy is separate from politics and has its own autonomous domain and communication system based on money and exchange in the market. The reverse is also true: science can deliver knowledge, but what is to be done with that knowledge is a matter of the economy, or the political discourse, and science cannot instruct politics. The same is true for art and science. The beautiful cannot be sci­ entifically determined, etc.

This is Luhmann's picture of society, which I very briefly sketch here. Luhmann has in fact written comprehensive analyses of all these social subsystems, but he did not write about architecture. He fit architecture anachronistically - into the art system, but really didn't talk much about it. I have been reading Luhmann for about 15 years, and it in­ creasingly occurred to me that architecture could be theorized in the same way. Architecture is one of those great function systems of contemporary society, our functionally differenti­ ated society.

Just a few more points about what that might mean. Luhmann discovers a series of important processes that deter­ mine these different systems within the era of modernity. The emerging market-orientation of the economy, the liberaliza­ tion of the economy, is the pertinent way for the economy to become an autopoietic system. The political system has been evolving and succeeding through democratization, and only through democratization does it become a truly autopoietic, self-referentially closed system. The legal system found its autonomy and forward drive through positivism rather than natural law or God-given legal discourse. Art discovered its self-programming in romanticism. All of these mechanisms

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mean that these systems become autonomous and adaptive to each other. They become versatile, innovative, progressive, and ever-:evolving. All these processes are established some­ where between 1800 and 1900. My thesis here is that the concept of space, or the spatialization of architecture, is the equivalent of the democratization of the political system, the

liberalization of the economy, etc. As Luhmann was analyzing these different function sys­

tems he realized that despite their differences - they share parallel structures and face parallel, or comparative, prob­ lems: How could they demarcate themselves? How could they cohere around an elemental operation? How could they rep­ resent within themselves the differences between them and their environment? He discovers that each of these systems has a binary code, programs that elaborate how the code val­ ues will be used. Each has its specific medium, such as money for the economy, and they all have a unique societal function, which acts as a kind of evolutionary attract or for the differ­ entiation and autonomization of that respective system. This unique and distinct function unfolds in a series of tasks. Each of these systems projected itself forward through something Luhmann called self-descriptions. This means that within each discourse there are theoretical reflections via great treatises, written accounts of trying to think through and argue the function, the purpose, the raison d'~tre of each of the function systems. So within the political system there is political theory. The legal system developed together with jurisprudence. Science developed together with epistemology, the philosophy of science. And architecture has architectural theory, but only a deep and comprehensive kind of architec­ tural theory functions as self-description. In volume two I go through some of them: Alberti's Ten Books on Architecture; Durand's lectures on architecture for the era of neoclassicism; Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture for modernism; and The Autopoiesis of Architecture for our time, for parametricism.

We can identify in every function system a so-called lead distinction. The lead distinction for architecture is form versus function. You find it in Alberti. You find it in all major self-descriptions. This lead distinction is the re-entry of the system-environment distinction into the system. It represents the distinction of the system of architecture against its en­ vironment - that is, against the totality of society - within architecture. So with the category of form, architecture rep­ resents itself to itself as distinct from function, which is the category representing the external world reference of archi­ tecture. The lead distinction of the economy is the distinction

Winter 2011 71

of price versus value: price is the internal reference; value is the external reference. In science it is theory versus evidence, in the law, norm versus fact, etc. There are further parallels between these function systems. To identify the respective structure in architecture that coincides with the structures found in the other function systems has been a creative puzzle-solving exercise, but in the end a coherent picture emerges that allows me to take a position with respect to all of the partial theories I have been developing over the years.

Let me show a few pictures of MAXXI in Rome as a reminder that there's a certain credibility in realizing projects that follow the principles I'm talking about. The Rome proj­ ect is a field project. It has a very stringent formalism. At the same time it is very capable of adapting to contexts, in terms of continuing field conditions, aligning with an urban grid on one side and with a separate urban grid on another, incorpo­ rating existing architectures, and managing to create a coher­ ent space around a corner. I would argue that it does a lot of difficult things with ease and elegance. Some of the strong alignments with the context go right through the building. There's a sense of bringing together disparate elements under a single formalism, with flow lines irrigating the space. One of the ambitions is moments of deep visual penetration, the legibility and transparency of complex organization. In the central communication hub, ramps and staircases follow the formal language of walls and ribs, creating something coherent. That's a precondition for generating an overall complexity without creating visual chaos. Although MAXXI was designed 10 years ago, it is a kind of early parametricist project. The proliferation of lines, bundling, converging, and departing from one another, creates a field space.

***

So let me define parametricism. First of all, a conceptual definition: all elements of architecture have become para­ metrically malleable. That's both fundamental and profound. The advantage of this is the intensification of relations both internally, within a design project, a building, and exter­ nally, with its context and surroundings. This is a funda­ mental ontological shift with respect to the base components and primitives constituting an architecture. For the previ­ ous 2,000 years, if you like, architecture was working with platonic solids, with rigid, hermetic, geometric figures, and just composing them. Compared with classical architecture, modernism was allowed to stretch proportions, was able to give up symmetries, and instead had a kind of dynamic

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equilibrium and more freedom that moved these figures from edifice to space with all of the advantages of abstraction and versatility that entails. But in terms of the base primitives, it was geometric figures and nothing else. If you look at the kinds of primitives we are working with today, however, it is a totally different world splines, blobs, nurbs, particles, all organized by scripts. I think it started with deconstructivism, to a certain extent, and then Greg Lynn talking about blobs in 1994-95. When we were teaching at Columbia in '93, we were creating dynamic, cross-inflected textures and fields. This was also the beginning of certain computational mechanisms. Instead of drawing with ruler and compass, making rigid lines and rigid figures, we worked with dynamical systems. That's a new ontology, which cannot but leave a profound, radically transformative mark on what we do. If we succeed, and I have no doubt parametricism will succeed, we'll change the physiognomy of this planet and its built environment, just the way modernism did for 50 years in the 20th century. The recession over the last two years put a bit of a damper on but that should not be misunderstood as a failure or refuta­ tion of this kind of work. In fact, architecture continues to invest in digital technology, fabrication systems, etc., and any prohibitive cost is diminishing as a factor. An economic recession cannot stand in the way of universalizing these principles. Parametricism is the way we do urbanism and architecture now.

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ZAHAHADID ARCHITECTS, MAXXI: MUSEUM OF XXI CENTURY ARTS, ROME, 1998-2009. PUBLIC PLAZA AT

ENTRY. PHOTO: IWAN BUN.

Winter 2011

ZAHA RADID ARCHITECTS, MAXXI:

MUSEUM OF XXI CENTURY ARTS,

ROME, 1998-2009. PHOTO: IWAN BAAN.

'" '" '" So the thesis is clear: parametricism is the great new style after modernism. I consider postmoderrusm and deconstructivism to be transitional styles, or transitional episodes. I think that architectural innovation and history proceed by the succession of styles. These are the great paradigms and research pro­ grams by which architecture redefines itself. Postmodernism and deconstructivism are temporary phenomena, a decade each. Parametricism is already 15 years down the line. Design research programs establish the conditions for the collec­ tive design research needed to agree on the fundamentals that add up to an overall research project. If you are fighting over fundamentals every time you start a new project, you cannot progress. Here I draw not on Luhmann so much as on the philosophy of science as projected by Thomas Kuhn, theorizing paradigm shifts, and in particular I draw on Imre Lakatos's theory of scientific research programs. Science is founded, or re-founded, with certain paradigmatic categories, principles, anticipations, and intuitions about how a science could progress, and on that basis, after a revolutionary period of paradigm exploration, a new paradigm or research pro­ gram has to emerge and win the competitive battle, and then reconstitute cumulative research. Like a research program, a shared style implies that you are formulating pertinent desires, framing and posing problems to work on, and stra­ tegically constraining the solution space. We are identifying

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problems and trying to solve these problems by means of parametric systems, by exploring the power of malleability in the elements. The style imposes a formal a priori. There are very strong analogies in science. For example, Newton set up a certain set of principles by which every phenomenon was investigated, probed, and modeled. From problem to prob­ lem, the same principles are held steady, otherwise there is no testing, no research. Innovation requires this kind of steady, collective effort. It is the condition of any progress.

We can think of the history of architecture in terms of cycles of innovation and shifts between revolutionary periods, when the paradigm is no longer working, as happened in the late '60s, the '70s, and early '80s. You couldn't really go on after Pruitt-Igoe was imploded. The principles that architects were relying on were exhausted. That's also why SCI-Arc was founded because the old university way of doing things couldn't continue, it was bankrupt. The situation required a sense of freewheeling brainstorming. Architecture drew on philosophers, and fundamental questions were asked. It's interesting that today philosophy has receded, we've reached a different stage. We have drawn conclusions and learned our lessons; we have internalized new forms of thinking and argumentation, new values, new philosophies, and now we have to forge ahead, developing a new architecture. Every new generation has to relearn the raison d'~tre of what we do, but that doesn't mean that what we are doing is up for discur­ sive destruction or disposition every second year. At the early stages of a new convergence you have to become accustomed to living with a lot of failures, a lot of difficulties, a lot of implausibilities. That's why we need the avant-garde: where there is methodical tolerance, where there are dry runs, experiments, and manifesto projects, and where you can't expect to immediately compete with the mainstream state of the art. You have to stick to your principles and not allow pragmatic concerns to push you to fall back on old models, old solutions, which are easy and accepted. You've got to go it the difficult way. You've got to go it the consistent way. The dogmatic way. That's what Newton did also.

It's important to give a conceptual definition of para­ metricism in terms of parametric malleability, but there is also an operational definition of parametricism. When I first started to talk about parametricism I was talking about for­ mal heuristics, but now I find it necessary also to talk about functional heuristics, because a style is not just a matter of form and structured formalisms. Each style also introduces a particular attitude and way of comprehending and handling

7S

ZAHA RADIO ARCHITECTS, NYC 2012

OLYMPIC VILLAGE COMPETITION PRO­

POSAL, NEW YORK, 2004. BIRD'S-EYE

VIEW AND PERSPECTIVE.

functions and program. Any.reri()u.r style must take a posi­ tion on these issues, and I think we have a different attitude and position with respect to function than the modernists. We need both functional heuristics and formal heuristics. This is not something I am dogmatically imposing, I'm just observ­ ing that I, my friends, my students, naturally adhere to these principles without faiL Their hand would fall off rather than draw straight lines. Is anybody here drawing a triangle, a square, or a circle? Ever again? No!

Postmodernism and deconstructivism celebrated collage, interpenetration, and layering in an unmediated way, but this notion of pure difference and collage, which is in fact the default condition of spontaneous urban development after the collapse of modernism, is invested only in just the pro­ liferation of pure difference, of piling up unrelated elements against unrelated elements, etc. But that is taboo within the discourse of parametric ism. Modernism, seriality, repetition are out of the question. Instead everybody is putting down their own shape, form, material- all uncoordinated. So, if the modernist recipes as well as their spontaneous antitheses are rejected, where are we going?

We are trying to create a second nature, a complex var­ iegated order, at Zaha Hadid Architects and at the different schools where we teach. I am trying to formulate the positive principles that determine the new physiognomy, that define a new way of working with parametrically malleable, soft forms. Soft forms are able to incorporate a degree of adap­ tive intelligence. They are no longer just forms, but may have gravity or structural constraints, material constraints, inbuilt logics that make them intelligent.

The second positive principle, or dogma, which all of you here always demand of yourselves and which your teachers

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will demand of you as students, is differentiation. If you are building differentiated systems, whether you work only with smooth gradients, or whether you work with thresholds or singularities, you will always work with laws, with rule­ based systems of differentiation. These can be applied mean­ ingfully, for instance, in the adaptation of facades to create an intelligent differentiation of elements. You can do this by taking data sets like sun exposure maps and make them drive an intelligent differentiation of brise-soleil elements, which are scripted off the data set. But you can also apply this kind of technique to urbanism. We're talking about urban fields, about the lawful differentiation of an urban fabric according to relevant data sets.

Once you have a series of these internally differentiated systems, you can think about establishing correlations be­ tween them, where one system drives the other. These are all co-present systems, which become representations of each other. They might be ontologically rather different, radically other. There will be multiple systems, each differentiated. Then you can establish correlations. Here, just a simple exam­ ple, are our towers for the New York Olympic Village, which interface with the ground and create a kind of resonance with it. The way the facade is correlated with the horizontal sec­ tion of a tower has to do with the programmatic shift from an office area to a residential area. And of course you can try to mechanize these correlations in terms of associative logics. What is important here for me is that we are moving from single-system projects, which are a kind of first stage - too abstract to really grip in reality to the inter-articulation of multiple subsystems, to multisystem correlations.

The principles of parametricism, in terms of its heuris­ tics, its operational definition, provide failsafe tools for criti-

Winter 2011 77

cism and self-criticism of project development and project enhancement. You can always identifY where the rigid forms still persist, where there is still too much simple repetition, where there are still unrelated elements. You can always ask for further softening, further differentiation, and further correlation of everything with everything else. There's always more to script and correlate to intensifY the internal consistency and cross-connections and resonance within a project and to a context. It's a never-ending trajectory of a project's progression. The intensification of relations in architecture reflects the intensification of communication among all of us, everyday and with everything. A building can no longer be a silo out in the greenfield; it needs to be connected in an urban texture, needs to be accessible, have internal differentiation, yet have a sense of continuity.

Functional heuristics. There are some taboos in terms of handling functions. We avoid thinking in terms of essences. We avoid stereotypes and strict typologies. We also avoid designating functions to strict and discrete zones. These are taboos for all of us. Instead, we think in terms of gradient fields of activity, about variable social scenarios calibrated by various event parameters. We think in terms of actor-artifact networks. That's the way we break down a program, a task. And that makes sense, because the formal heuristics and func­ tional heuristics coalesce, make sense together. To translate these functions into form you need the formal heuristics I discussed earlier.

Clearly, parametric systems or techniques could be used as technologies of design by modernists like Norman Foster; they could also be used by neoclassicists. The point is that the tools themselves have great potential, but we need to drive these potentials and draw decisive conclusions and give value and direction to the utilization of these tools. That is the difference between a set of techniques and a style, which depends on these techniques, albeit not exclusively, but drives them to a new destiny. Foster's British Museum dome could only have been done with parametric tools. Every joint is dif­ ferent, every panel is different. The use of parametrics made this possible, but the spirit of this application is the spirit of modernism of neutralizing the differences, making them inconspicuous. Here all elements are different but they want to appear the same. Against that I put forward a new kind of "artistic project," the project of driving the conspicuous amplification of differences. So a difference in curvature is transcoded into radically different conditions of ribbing, of gridding, of dense networking, perhaps engendering a phase

78

PATRIK SCHUMACHER IS A DIRECTOR

OF ZAHA HADm ARCHITECTS AND

PROFESSOR AT INNSBRUCK UNIVER­

SITY. HE IS ALSO CO-DIRECTOR OF

THE DESI<TN RESEARCH LABORATORY

AT THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION

SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, LONDON.

Winter 2011

change at a certain threshold. This is much more prone to the development of versatile conditions and different atmo­ spheres, which bleed into each other instead of establishing disparate zones. I think our work forms a much more perti­ nent image and vehicle of contemporary life forces and pat­ terns of social communication than that big Foster dome.

This emphasis on differentiation, the amplification of de­ viations rather than neutralization and compensation, is also related to the difference between exploratory design research and problem solving. Problem solving is the engineering side, the side of parametric technique. In contrast, when we are talking about parametricism as style, we're talking about teasing out the as yet unknown potentials of these techniques, but with the general direction clearly set by the parametricist heuristic principles. This has been going on for quite a while now. I believe that we are on the cusp of moving from an avant-garde condition into claiming the mainstream. Most of our projects, even most of our built work, are hypotheses, manifestos, but I think some of our projects go beyond that and are becoming compelling success stories in the real world.

The projects now coming out of the office show the rich­ ness of our formal vocabulary and the richness of types of structures we are addressing. There's a kind of unity within difference, or difference within unity, moving across various scales: endless forms. But these endless forms are there to or­ ganize and articulate life. So formpo"Wers function. That's the new thesis. Spatial organization sustains social organization. Can we demonstrate, control, and predict this? To a certain extent, I would argue, we can.

If we look at the history of parametricism, in fact it's the history of the whole evolution of architecture. The funda­ mental thesis is that social order requires spatial order, that society doesn't exist without a structured environment, and that society can only evolve if it is able to enhance and intri­ cately structure its built environment as well. Architecture provides the necessary substrate of cultural evolution.

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