The Greek temple is presented by Andrew Ballantyne as the archetype of European architecture due to its fusing of art, social status and practicality (and through those becoming elitist), so Walden’s hut has become synonymous with the American approach, embodying a no-nonsense pragmatist approach to building 6. In the same way some project (or perhaps a family of ideas, or something entirely unimaginable) will embody digital architecture – either Parametricism or some other strand.
Far from an elaborate model for a prospective building, this project will stretch through space and time in ways utterly incompatible with the buildings of today. The result will possibly not be unlike the works of Lebbus Woods or Archigram. Unfortunately, their work is bound to two dimensions (or at best three), hence lacking the required breadth for such a placement, as well as a profusely analogue tool kit.
Crucial to Parametricism’s development is its cultural environment. On its own it would perhaps be similar to other styles, but instead it gathers its momentum by being thoroughly interconnected. In Patrik Schumacher’s words: ‘Every architectural project is immediately exposed and assessed in comparison to all other projects. Global convergences are possible.’ 7
This aspect of online sharing is crucial to its proliferation, as it effortlessly transcends any limitations and enables a near-instantaneous omni-presence. Any instance of such a broadcasted slice of architectural creation becomes at the same time an influential tool, as well as (and perhaps more importantly) a potential component of a future project of another author. Whether used in its original form or, more commonly, in a transformed state, it can become a key component of such an ensuing design.
The process can be likened a face pressed against a plane of glass. The transformed face is in itself no different; except it has an active transformer (glass) applied to it and an observer to perceive the resulting state. Although such deformations have always been present in some form or another, they were usually not a part of the design process itself as they are not (easily) controlled by hand, except in the case of catenary where gravity ensures instant responsiveness. When controlled deformations became a possibility, a theoretical foundation for it was necessary and such transformations were retroactively legitimized. Otherwise they would have ended up mere experimentation, or even worse, pure formalism.
The concepts of Deleuze and folding were appropriated. Similarly as Deconstructivism earlier, an obscure philosophical concept was imported to ordain a new-found possibility of spatial expression. The sources of Deleuze’s work stem from mathematical research of self-similar objects, where the essence of an object is not defined through its (current) manifestation, but takes into account its previous, future and all other possible forms. For Deleuze that means an object is constantly a collection of all the potential possibilities of its use. When used for one purpose, it is simply living out one of its identities, while retaining all others, preserving the multiplicity of its uses.
With the advent of malleable virtual forms that could have numerous modifiers applied to them blended with the pre-existing philosophical concept wonderfully, even if as such geometrical deformational processes have even been used to account for evolutionary formal deformations.
Other parallels can be drawn between contemporary and historical advocates of various styles. Pugin’s passionate campaigning for the revival of Gothic can perhaps be likened to Schumacher’s support of Parametricism, as style in itself is in both cases believed to embody the qualities of a certain idea. Although both authors focus on the exploration of a perceived ‘essence’, both remain within an irrelevant frame of ‘style’, applying it almost religiously to a body whose essential differences are to be found in a number of other layers other than its looks.
