Folding Style

Last crawled date: 1 year, 10 months ago

Parametric modeling is a design technique that uses smart, three-dimensional modeling software to help guide and track the design of complex projects. Modeling software — such as Catia, Revit, ArchiCad and Digital Project — is eclipsing conventional CAD software in most commercial architecture firms, largely due to its ability to manage and coordinate information throughout design and construction. In design studios, parametric modeling is used to create patterns, spaces and forms through the input of specific criteria and operational parameters. The resulting contours of patterns, spaces and forms are not designed by the gesture of a hand on paper, but rather controlled indirectly by the design of software that controls inputted information. The emerging ideological divide I refer to is reminiscent of the division between back-to-nature environmentalists and postmodern formalists in the late 1970s and early ’80s. With a crucial difference: Postmodern formalism was a reaction to what were perceived to be deterministic design methodologies focused on social or environmental science. Today the situation is reversed: Both sustainable design and mission-driven design practices are reactions to the perceived formal autonomy of projects designed with the aid of parametric modeling. We may be seeing the conclusion of an historical arc that began in the early ’70s and that has been bracketed by global energy crises