Bruno Matos's List: Computational Architecture

• PROFESSOR
• Prof. Dipl.-Ing., M.A. Moritz Hauschild
• +49 (06151) 16-3781
   hauschild@ekon.tu-...

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• We pursue the parametric design paradigm all the way, penetrating into all corners of the discipline. Systematic, adaptive variation, continuous differentiation (rather than mere variety), and dynamic, parametric figuration concerns all design tasks from urbanism to the level of tectonic detail, interior furnishings and the world of products.
• The mass society that was characterized by a single, nearly universal consumption standard has evolved into the heterogenous society of the multitude.
• The contemporary architectural style that has achieved pervasive hegemony within the contemporary architectural avant-garde can be best understood as a research programme based upon the parametric paradigma. We propose to call this style: Parametricism.
    Parametricism is the great new style after modernism. Postmodernism and Deconstructivism have been transitional episodes that ushered in this new, long wave of research and innovation.
• Styles are design research programmes.3
• The programme/style consists of methodological rules: some tell us what paths of research to avoid (negative heuristics), and others what paths to pursue (positive heuristics). The negative heuristics formulates strictures that prevent the relapse into old patterns that are not fully consistent with the core, and the positive heuristics offers guiding principles and preferred techniques that allow the work to fast-forward in one direction. The defining heuristics of parametricism are fully reflected in the taboos and dogmas of contemporary avant-gared design culture:
    Negative heuristics: avoid familiar typologies, avoid platonic/hermetic objects, avoid clear-cut zones/territories, avoid repetition, avoid straight lines, avoid right angles, avoid corners, …, and most importantly: do not add or subtract without elaborate interarticulations.
    Positive heuristics: interarticulate, hyberdize, morph, deterritorialize, deform, iterate, use splines, nurbs, generative components, script rather than model, …
• had already been formulated at the beginning of the 1990s with the key slogan of “continuous differentiation”6
• One of the most pervasive current techniques involves populating modulated surfaces with adaptive components.Components might be constructed from multiple elements constrained/cohered by associative relations so that the overall component might sensibly adapt to various local conditions. As they populate a differentiated surface their adaptation should accentuate and amplify this differentiation.
• The current stage of advancement within parametricism relates as much to the continuous advancement of the attendant computational dresign technologies as it is due to the designer’s realization of the unique formal and organizational opportunities that are afforded. Parametricism can only exist via sophisticated parametric techniques.
• Finally, computationally advanced design techniques like scripting (in Mel-script or Rhino-script) and parametric modeling (with tools like GC or DP) are becoming a pervasive reality. Today it is impossible to compete within the contemporary avant-garde scene without mastering these techniques.
• It is the sense of organized (law-governed) complexity that assimilates parametricist works to natural systems, where all forms are the result of lawfully interacting forces. Just like natural systems, parametricist compositions are so highly integrated that they cannot be easily decomposed into independent subsystems – a major point of difference in comparison with the modern design paradigm of clear separation of functional subsystems.
• The first session – curated and introduced by Patrik Schumacher was titled: Parametricism as New Style. The following 8 architectural studios were presenting: MAD, f-u-r, UFO,  Plasma Studio, Minimaforms, Aranda/Lasch, AltN Research+Design, MOH. Jeff Kipnis acted as moderator.
• whole new research traditions that are directed by a new fundamental theoretical framework. It is this latter concept that is utilized here for the reinterpretation of the concept of style. See: Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Cambridge 1978
• Lakatos, Imre, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Cambridge 1978, p.5
• The credit for coining this key slogan goes to Greg Lynn and Jeff Kipnis.
• “Parametric Figuration” featured in our teachings at Yale and at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. It also featured in my studio at the AADRL.

• Parametric Responsiveness was at the heart of our 3 year design research agenda “Responsive Environments” at the AADRL in London from 2001-2004.

   

   

   

  9 “Parametric Urbanism” is the title of our recently completed design research cycle at the AADRL, from 2005 – 2008.

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• Parametricism is a methodologically justified style that takes the concept of using parametric form design from the production of a one-off building and applying it to a cityscape..

  Architecture and urbanism should be tackled as a set of linked design criteria which form a complete “system” in a building, from urbanism down to the smallest details.

  Parametric design links all this information in a way similar to a spreadsheet so that a change in one value creates a corresponding change in all other values. biological systems, organisms, from the microscopic to the macroscopic... these kinds of inputs stay in the repertoire. There’s also mathematics – new mathematics – topological patterns and also what is having a impact is new modelling tools and more recently parametric modelling, parametric fields and scripted fields, a new sensibility with respect to orders of iteration. Looking through these new tools there’s a kind of intricacy of overall arrangement with a very high degree of coherence. There’s a lot of internal laws of correlation; everything relates to everything else. It’s a continuous change but it all fits together. It’s not random or arbitrary.

   
  

  
    

    

   

   editorOphelia Fletcher

• O Instituto de Engenharia de Estruturas e Construção do IST tem em curso uma linha de investigação sobre “Personalização da Produção em Série” que propõe alargar o espectro social da ciência da arquitectura, através do recurso às novas tecnologias. Um dos projectos já desenvolvidos em parceria com a Ove Arup, liderado pelo Professor José Pinto Duarte com o apoio de alunos de pós-graduação do IST, incidiu sobre a personalização da habitação.
• O objectivo da personalização da produção em série é a concepção e produção de objectos de elevada qualidade a um custo acessível, tendo sempre como referência a satisfação das necessidades dos utilizadores. Aspecto diferenciador e distintivo deste tipo de produção é o carácter único de cada objecto e o controlo de custos, possibilitados pelo recurso ao projecto e fabricação assistidos por computador que evitam a repetição exaustiva da produção em série habitual. Deste modo, no caso da habitação, encontram-se soluções adequadas a agregados familiares específicos através de processos de projecto e construção racionalizados implementados com recurso às novas tecnologias.
• O projecto com a Ove Arup focou-se no desenho de habitação com o objectivo de dar ao cidadão comum acesso à criação de arquitectos conceituados, visando mais tarde estender este conceito a outras áreas do sector da Arquitectura, Engenharia e Construção.

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• the key examples of turning points in the construction: the Munich Glass Palace, Jean Prouvé's Maison Tropicale and Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House to current system structures and digital production methods.