Chuang, Che-Kuang
In “The Digitalist Paradigm”, the author Nick Pisca briefly described the background of the current development of parametric design, including the three major fields: explicit modeling, parametric system and computational algorithm. He also pointed out that most designers misinterpreted these new ideas and technologies, such as misusing of the digital tools,misunderstanding of the terms and wrong definitions. Nick indicated that even great avant-garde architect Patrick Schumacher made mistakes in his famous theory‟Parametricism”. Actually, Nick Pisca disagreed with many Patrick’s opinions in ‟Parametricism”.
The first reason is that in Patrick’stheory, he only described “explicit modeling”, not including parametric system or computational algorithm. Patrick described the recent trend in architecture mostly by fluid shapes and free forms. However, Nick Pisca mentioned that most of these forms could be hand-made through NURBS and Subdivision software, such as Maya, Rhino and 3ds Max. These 3d programs only aided designer to create nice-looking forms, but it can’t help architects and engineers to construct the relationship between building and environment. In the other words, they could only show the appearance of design, not the inner logic of the design process.
Second, Nick Pisca thought there are too many ‟rules of thumb” in Patrick’s works. The goal of parametric design pursued for objective and accurate results. Through collecting and analyzing cloud data of the environment, architects and engineers could analog different situations for buildings, including wind, humidity and clash distance. Through these studying these science researches and parametric system, designer could get the best result of the design works. However, if there are too many human experience involved,this accurate and objective process might be disorganized, because there to many aesthetic judgment and human emotion implicated in the process.
Third, in Patrick Schumacher’s ‟Parametricism”,he only described the development and application of digital tools in architecture field, and Nick thought that is too narrow and the definition is not clear. In Nick’s opinion, as a “big” ism, this movement should include not only the development of digital tools and media in architecture and buildings,but also in different kind of fine art, such as painting, sculpture, drama,animation, etc. Through studying the effect of digital media on entire fine art field, the definition could be correct and precise; otherwise it is just a partial opinion and other kind of extension of postmodernism and desconstructivism.
Based on the previous three reasons, NickPisca thought ‟Parametricism” is not a brand new ism or movement; it is just abranch of postmodernism. In order to clearly define these new trends in digital media, Nick Pisca invented a new term ‟Digitalism”. Rather than ‟Parametricism”,He think this term could perfectly represent all the innovation movement in digital era. In the end of his article, he sorted out three major tenants of ‟Digitalism”:
1. Computational and parametric system should stand outside aesthetic judgment.
2. The design process must require extra-human design or the elimination/reduction of human involvement, either via technological means (i.e. computer) or analog computation (i.e. material).
3. The operational method should be stripped of any general “rules of thumb” and conventional intuition. Wisdom is derived from the process of exercise, not from human interaction.
These three rules perfectly show the goals of parametric design: the beauty of the logical system, not the beauty of the appearance.
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