I try to solve almost any problem with a Genetic Algorithm. And when you have a hammer as big as a Genetic Algorithm, with almost 3.7 billion years of user testing, it is hard not to see many Genetic Algorithm nails sticking out all over the place. On any other year I would have given this to the Genetic Algorithm, but 2010 has really been the year of the Spring Algorithm. There have been some fascinating projects: Kangaroo physics (above), Ander’s work with the Maya Nucleus Engine, projects by Supermanouver and Kokkugia, and even I dropped the genetic algorithm and picked up the spring algorithm for a while. Also all those tensegrity projects you have seen everywhere this year: spring algorithm.
What I particularly like about the spring algorithm is that it is our algorithm. Most of the other algorithms are hand-me-downs from computer science, in a list that contains all my old favorites: Cellular Automata, Genetic Algorithms, Simulated Annealing, L-systems and Shape Grammars. But there is something inherently spatial about the spring algorithm that makes it useless for anything other than physical stuff, and I like that.
Software of the year
Draftsight almost won this by completely pissing on Autodesk’s release of Autocad for OSX, by launching an almost identical product, weeks earlier, for thousands of dollars less (free). Not only that, Draftsight actually works. While Draftsight certainly had the biggest bang this year, Grasshopper has spent the year slowly cranking out significant features. It started with the new plugin system, which has grown into a sizable array of tools, including: Kangaroo, Rabbit, and Weaver Bird. Add onto that the release of Galapagos for Genetic Algorithms, and the re-release of clusters, 2010 has been Grasshoppers year.
Walk into any university final year exhibition and you are certain to find a Grasshopper definition lurking in more than one of the panels. I spoke to some Autodesk developers this year and you could tell that Rhino and Grasshopper – despite their small market share – had really fired Autodesk up. Autodesk desperately wants to be cool again. In the long run they might be because Grasshopper seems to have taken the concept of graph based parametric modelling almost to its conclusion. I think the next major development in computational architecture will not be a more refined version of Grasshopper, but an entirely new take on it. Autodesk, having acquired Robert Aish, have quietly been working on some physics based modellers and the new Designscript project. And as we saw with Autoplan, it wouldn’t be the first time Autodesk have come from behind to conquer a market, that is if Draftsite/Dassault don’t get there first.
Call of the year
How about you? Do you have convictions about what constitutes a meaningful for contemporary architecture? Or are you unsure? (Do whatever we feel like??? What then? Or what people want??? What do they want?) Do you have the opportunity to work according to your own convictions – if you have convictions? Are you able and willing to state the principles that underly your work? Could these just be valid for you? Who is Daniel Morales to have principles all for himself? Which client should by into Daniel Morales’ personal perspective???
18th of May, Schumacher decides the best defense of parametricism is to go on the offensive against Daniel Morales. With comments like this, rightly or wrongly, 2010 was the year of parametricism.
Fornes has been producing projects in this vein for years, and in 2010 it seems everyone caught on making their own large-scale-installation-of-mass-customised-lazer-cut-pieces-distributed-on-irrational-surfaces.
I like 10 Sukkah City because it is beautiful. I like it because the surface is mathematically interesting, and difficult to panel around the holes. But I mostly like 10 Sukkah city because it collapsed. 10 Sukkah City represents where computational architecture is today: we can make beautiful structures, we can design with fancy and complex mathematics using computation, but we are struggling to deploy them at building scale, we are struggling to embed function, and we have no idea how to calculate the structural load. These problems are masked in a large-scale installation (whereas they are not on a building), the collapse of 10 Sukkah City pulled back that mask a little bit and gave an honest insight into where we stand at the end of 2010.
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Please nominate your ‘of the year’ in the comments. I hope you all have an enjoyable new year. I am taking a short break back to New Zealand but will be back here shortly.
It has been a strange week. It started in Copenhagen with me teaching students how to build wooden reciprocal frame domes. I was preparing to leave Copenhagen and spend some time in London so that I could, amongst other things, gate crash the launch of Patrik Schumacher’s new book The Autopoiesis of Architecture. But as I was packing my bags, my Grandfather died. I decided to skip London so that I could return to my family, and I spent the next 48 hours recreating the journey my Grandfather made when he was my age and immigrated to New Zealand from London – only his trip cost 10 quid and took 6 weeks. At some stage while I was floating in the jet-stream, in between timezones I have never visited, I received a message from London, from Patrik Schumacher, in response to this blog post, that began: “Hi Daniel, Don’t be such an ungenerous prick!” To be fair, a Google search for “Patrik Schumacher” used to show as the 9th result: “By far the biggest villain in all of parametric design is Patrik Schumacher,” which is a quote from me, so his response was on the level. Schumacher mentioned being “attacked by a blogger from Australia,” in his lecture at the launch of The Autopoiesis of Architecture, and at almost the same instant Schumacher made this statement, on the other side of the world, I helped bury my Grandfather.
I don’t place any significance on the interweaving of these two events, but I do find the circles in the narrative interesting.
Once things settled down, a long debate between Schumacher and a couple of other readers emerged on the blog. It seems a shame to hide such a significant debate in the comments, so with this post I want to highlight what was said, and direct your attention to the original comments (here) – although judging by the number of people who have ‘confessed’ to reading these comments (as if this blog is my secret diary) you might already know about them.
There is something to be said about the character of Schumacher that he would respond to critique like this. I think it demonstrates that Schumacher is serious about Parametricism – this is not just some idea he dreamt up for a speaking gig or as a way to increase his publication count (not looking at any academic in particular). His response is not so much a defense of Parametricism as it is an invitation to participate, for even a rebuttal of Parametricism achieves Schumacher’s goal of getting architects to consider how ”harnessing generative computational processes” advances architecture. With such a broad idea, an idea that Schumacher is still – very publicly - working out, in a very fractured community, it is little wonder he has stepped on a few toes. But it is apparent from both his words and his actions that he wants others to join in refining this vision.
On the name Parametricism, Schumacher writes:
“Perhaps you can try to come up with a better label, or argue why you think that any such labels are not useful. This argument was made quite a lot – and I have an answer to that: a name is an anchor for self-description, collective reflection, and a fighting slogan for outward proselytizing and media recognition. Why should we leave these advantages to others. Why should we impoverish our discourse?”
Parametricism is definitely double sided. On the one hand there is something very marketable and memorable about it, which is partly why students are so seduced by it. On the other hand it invokes notions of parametric design, when Parametricism is fairly agnostic to design methods. I think for many people in the area of computational design, it is hard to get past this, it has taken me almost three months.
On the perceived lack of context for Parametricism, Schumacher writes:
“I am not a full time lecturer, I am a practicing architect before I am a theorist, and I have a lot to show even before going into somebody else’s work … I encourage anybody with the passion, insight and the time at hand to do this work of presenting the best work within the framework of parametricism.”
An almost perfect critique of Parametricism would be to evaluate historic architecture in terms of parametricism principles. This would get away from the application of other value systems in the discussion of Parametricism and would critique it with its own logic.
On the design methods that applied to Parametricism, Schumacher writes:
“Do not forget that parametricism as a style is not only defined via its design techniques but also via its ambitions and certain key features of its results, i.e. the general increase in the spatial complexity (sustaining an increase in programmatic complexity) as well as the general intensification of relations, i.e. an intensification of communication between spaces within a building and between the building and its surroundings. We need to understand what all this is good for in the end. What are the advantages of parametricism for the progress of our civilisation?”
Is ZHA a parametric firm:
This was very articularly answered by Matei in some earlier comments, but Schumacher adds:
“ZHA projects are always following the heuristic principles of parametricism , even if not all of them are always computationally driven. But we should also not forget that an intelligent and talented designer can – to a certain extent – articulate adaptive correlations between object and context, volume/façade and environmental parameters, between the variously differentiated subsystem within the building via mere modelling without deploying algorithms. The intelligence that is able to invent and think through such correlations is prior to its computational implementation. And, to a limited extend there can be ‘computation without computers’.”
And finally, on emergence vs parametric
“You make an interesting point about GA s in the context of a circumscribed optimisation problem, but you might decide to speak about bounded vs boundless emergence, or introduce the concept of relative degrees of circumscription with respect to emergence.”
For some reason ‘degrees of boundedness’ really resonates with me and has helped start me thinking about what happens in the middle of these two extreme positions.
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I am still tentative about agreeing with Schumacher, but what is the alternative? People are more than willing to kick him, but are reluctant to put forward their own vision – I very much belong in this group. In this sense perhaps Parametricism has been unsuccessful at getting architects to consider how ”harnessing generative computational processes” advances architecture, for we have become so focused on our niche it is hard to see the advances of architecture through the details of parametricism. In a weeklong twist of fate, I have become sympathetic to Parametricism and Schumacher’s arrogance, and I fear yet another blog post might need to be dedicated to Schumacher once my copy of The Autopoiesis of Architecture arrives.
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