T H E P OL I T I C S OF P A R A ME T R I C I S M

DI GI TAL TECHNOLOGI E S AND THE FUT URE( S) OF SOCI AL I T Y

A ONE-DAY CONFERENCE CURATED & ORGANISED BY:
MATTHEW POOLE & MANUEL SHVARTZBERG
Fri day 1 5th & Saturday 1 6th November 201 3
REDCAT, 631 W 2nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
aestheticsandpolitics.calarts.edu/conferences
www.redcat.org/event/politics-parametricism
PRESS DOSSIER
Image: Synthesis Design + Architecture, Xiamen Dream City Tower, 2011
Sponsored by:
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.
Parametricism as Style - Parametricist Manifesto
By Patrik Schumacher, London 2008 www.patrikschumacher.com
Presented and discussed at the Dark Side Club1 , 11th Architecture Biennale, Venice
Image courtesy of Peter Vikar
CONTENTS
1. GENERAL INFORMATION 5

2. SHORT PRESS RELEASE 7

3. LONG PRESS RELEASE 8
4. KEYNOTE EVENT DETAILS 10
5. PANEL TITLES & DESCRIPTIONS 11
6. CONFERENCE TIMETABLE 14
7. GUEST SPEAKERS BIOGRAPHIES 17
8. SPONSORS 21
9. CONTACT DETAILS 22
Displays of beyond-human
formal complexity drop out of
the computational design
systems employed in the
search for exoticism and
difference - a difference that
was demanded by the market
pluralism of ultra capitalism.
Appropriately, these projects
seemed to use the very same
kind of tools that have
maximised, magnified and
deepened the current financial
crisis.
If the modern movement had
the abstraction of industry as
its reference, millennial
architecture had the
systematised abstraction of
late capitalism.
Zaha Hadid Architects and the Neoliberal Avant-Garde
By Owen Hatherley, 26 October 2010 http://www.metamute.org
Page 5.
1. GENERAL INFORMATION:
T HE P OL I T I C S OF P AR AME T R I C I S M
Digital technologies and the future(s) of sociality
Friday 15th & Saturday 16th November 2013
REDCAT, 631 W 2nd St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
http://www.redcat.org
http://aestheticsandpolitics.calarts.edu/conferences
A conference curated and organized by:
Matthew Poole & Manuel Shvartzberg
Hosted by:
The MA Aesthetics & Politics Program at CalArts and The Gallery at REDCAT
Lead sponsor:
Autodesk (www.autodesk.com)
Media Sponsor:
eVolo Magazine (www.evolo.us)
Guest Speakers:
Phil Bernstein (Autodesk), Benjamin Bratton (UCSD), Christina Cogdell (UCD), Teddy Cruz (UCSD),
Peggy Deamer (Yale), Andrs Jaque (Office for Political Innovation), Laura Kurgan (Columbia), Neil
Leach (USC, Los Angeles), Reinhold Martin (Columbia) & Patrik Schumacher (Zaha Hadid Architects,
London).
Above: Image courtesy of Synthesis Design + Architecture
Page 6.
Tsinghua University Parametrics Workshop, 2010, Tutor Daniel Gillen
Page 7.
2. SHORT PRESS STATEMEMENT:
PARAMETRICISM has been heralded as the new avant-garde in the fields of archi-
tecture and design the next grand style in the history of architectural movements.
Parametric models enable digital designers to create complex structures and environ-
ments as well as new understandings of space, both real and virtual.
Whether as tools for democratic action or tyrannical spectacle; self- and community-
building capabilities; a post-humanistic subject; or, the mediatized politics of our vari-
ous futurisms all these themes are figured within the Parametricist discourse.
This conference, which includes a range of high profile international speakers from
architectural practice and theory, will explore urgent questions that concern the social
and political ramifications at stake in the evolution of this new design paradigm.
Above:
Port to Port, Advanced Data Visualization Project courtesy of SIDL (Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia
University), in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Research Unit. Project Team:
Laura Kurgan, Project Director, Jen Lowe, Research Associate and Data Visualization
Page 8.
3. LONGER PRESS STATEMEMENT:
THE POLITICS OF PARAMETRICISM: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AND THE FUTURE(S) OF SO-
CIALITY is an international conference to be held at REDCAT, in Downtown Los Angeles, CA,
USA on Friday 15th and Saturday 16th of November 2013.
A range of international guest speakers from the industries and academic spheres of archi-
tecture and urbanism will explore urgent questions that concern the social and political rami-
fications of the spreading influence of parametric scripting software as the potential stand-
ard industry tool for architecture, urban planning and many other aspects of design.
PARAMETRICISM has recently been heralded as the new avant-garde in the industries of
architecture, urban design, industrial design, and digital information modeling: the natural heir
to the passing out of favor of Postmodernist and Deconstructionist models.
An increasing number of architecture projects and industrially manufactured products are
now designed and realized using digital software based on parametric or algorithmic scripting
platforms. These platforms have the capability to process large quantities of data for the de-
velopment of complex topological structures and environments, as well as new understand-
ings of space, both real and virtual.
As the stream of new tools and products proliferates, in the apparently infinite expansion of
the repertoire of design functions Parametricism allegedly affords, critical questions regard-
ing these cultural and technological phenomena are often overtaken by the popular seduc-
tive aesthetic and alluring futurism such design tools and products represent. This confer-
ence seeks to address this issue, where we see innovation overtaking its own interrogation.
To date, critiques of the proliferation of parametric design processes have focused on the
central issue of a technocratization of social relations intrinsic to the Parametricist design
ethos. These critiques principally observe and raise alarm that Parametricist design process-
es actively quantify bodies, subjects, and the coding of spaces in full acquiescence with the
logic of Neoliberal socioeconomics, gesturing towards a collapse of political potential and the
destruction of social bonds and forms of dissent by such means.
Such criticisms focus on Parametricisms apparently seamless coextensive integration of
social relations, technological automatization, and Neoliberal governmentality. Here, the politi-
cal forces that affect social relations are seen as being reduced by Parametricism to purely
techno-economic, instrumental imperatives, and hence to the imperatives of the structures
of late-stage capitalism that appear to govern such technological innovations.
Page 9.
This debate, taken up most explicitly in academia and latently by varied social movements,
continues to interrogate these issues decrying the closure that Parametricist discourses are
enforcing upon a conception of the indeterminacy of the social. However, the stakeholders
in the industries of architecture, industrial manufacturing, software development, and urban
design remain broadly aloof from these critical discourses. In practice and in pedagogy those
developing the Parametricist repertoire largely bypass the debates of critically evaluating
the fast-paced development of complex informational systems to forge ahead with the ex-
panding of the technical and formal tools available to the industry.
The approach that this conference will take is to try to explore the points of convergence of
the critical discourses of Parametricism and its practical innovations within its industries. We
propose to explore the foundational impulses and methods/mechanisms of such practices
and discourses by rethinking sociality as a form of collective technology: i.e. social formations
and transformations considered as tacit design processes rather than as natural evolution-
ary processes.
Whether as tools for democratic action or tyrannical spectacle; self- and community-building
capabilities; a post-humanistic subject; or the mediatized politics of our various futuristic
imaginaries all these themes are figured and being actively assembled within the Parame-
tricist discourse.
Over the course of two days, a range of high profile international speakers from architectural
practice and theory will explore these and other questions regarding Parametricism, asking
what social, political, ethical, and philosophical issues are at stake in the evolution of this new
design paradigm.
This conference is curated and organized by Matthew Poole and Manuel Shvartzberg, and is
hosted by the MA Aesthetics & Politics Program at CalArts (www.calarts.edu) and The Gallery
at REDCAT (www.redcat.org). The principal sponsor is Autodesk (www.autodesk.com). The
media sponsor is eVolo Magazine (www.evolo.us).
Below: Model Sketches, 2013, by Peter Vikar
Page 10.
3. KEYNOTE EVENT DESCRIPTION:
THE POLITICS OF PARAMETRICISM conference will open with individual presen-
tations and a debate between Reinhold Martin (Associate Professor, Columbia
University) and Patrik Schumacher (Partner, Zaha Hadid Architects) at 7pm on
Friday November 15th, 2013, at the REDCAT theatre in Downtown Los Angeles.
Architecture and Politics: Parametricism within or beyond liberal democracy?
At the very core of the debates surrounding Parametricism is the question of what political
agency can or should be ascribed to architecture. Two diffuse yet clearly distinguishable sides
seem to have formed around this question: those who, like Patrik Schumacher, defend the
notion that architecture and politics ought to be considered structurally excluded domains of
thought and action; and those who, like Reinhold Martin, consider these fields integrally tied
together, albeit indeterminately.
The schism echoes the critical vs. post-critical debate in architectural practice and theory of
the last decade, except that now a single architectural process or style Parametricism is
gaining grounds as the incarnate technological discourse wherein the debate is most ardently
unfolding.
Parametricism may thus present itself as a case study of the contemporary relation be-
tween technology and ideology, where the many tropes of contemporary politics and culture
from post-Fordism and mass-customization, to socially networked revolutions and experi-
ments in social representation come together through and within a specific architectural
imaginary.
In this debate, Martin and Schumacher will address this cultural paradigm and tackle what
is perhaps the most urgent question for this new social, political and architectural condition:
Can or ought Parametricism develop strictly within the confines of liberal democracy, or could
it be pursued through more radical political valences?
Page 11.
4. PANEL TITLES & DESCRIPTIONS:
KEYNOTE EVENT:
Architecture and politics: Parametricism within or beyond liberal democracy?
a discussion with Reinhold Martin and Patrik Schumacher
Reinhold Martin: On Numbers, More or Less
Patrik Schumacher: Thesis on the Politics of Parametricism
PANEL 1: Introduction to Parametricism: historical and technological context
Phillip G. Bernstein: Finding Value in Parameters: How Scripting Beyond Form Changes
the Potential of Design Practice
Christina Cogdell: Breeding Ideology: Parametricism and Biological Architecture
Neil Leach: There is no such thing as a political architecture; there is no such thing as
digital architecture
This first panel will include a brief introduction to the history and key developments in para-
metric digital design in various contexts. This will be followed by papers from guest speakers,
and a discussion that will explore the following questions:
1. Why, and under what criteria, is Parametricist architecture heralded as the new avant-
garde of architecture? Is this claim justified? And, if so, what are the political ramifications of
this?
2. Why and how is parametric digital design and manufacture software becoming an increas-
ingly used tool in architecture, built environment design, product design, and information
management?
3. In what ways can we productively mine the history of the parametric paradigm, as its his-
tory is recognizable from as early as the rise of cybernetics in the mid-twentieth century and
the post-industrialization of major global economies?
4. What are the ramifications for radical critique within a design paradigm currently largely
aligned with dominant power structures?
Page 12.
Panel 2: Parametricism, the commons and social representation
Teddy Cruz: The New Political: Where the Top Down and the Bottom up Meet
Peggy Deamer: Parametric Schizophrenic
Laura Kurgan: The Method is the Message
The coalescing of information management within parametric digital design/manufacture
technologies enables it to undertake many more tasks than simply producing ultra-efficient
building design processes. As parametric design technologies incorporate live dynamic data
streaming at ever more complex scales they are employed by governments, city planning of-
fices and large private corporations to project future modeling of social patterns and behav-
iors. This expanding capability of the parametric repertoire to map and actively affect social
relations requires that it be given urgent and rigorous critical analysis to explore if and how
new formulations of genuinely democratic governance may emerge from the use of such
technologies.
This panel will open with an extended introduction that outlines these issues, and will be fol-
lowed by papers from guest speakers and a discussion that explores the following questions:
1. What is the significance of traditional definitions of political subjectivity - such as the pri-
vate, the public, the social; work, leisure, and agency; art, media, and technology; citizenship,
belonging, and exclusion when these now appear either randomly diffused or structurally
over-determined in our contemporary condition, especially within the scripting, labor prac-
tices, and potential uses of parametric architecture?
2. How are we to understand the roles of the designer and user in this expanded field of
architecture, wherein digital tools and social networks have the potential of both locking down
and democratizing access to design and spatialized socialities?
3. How might parametric design processes enable counter-cartographies and counter-pub-
lics to challenge and redirect the dominant neoliberal economic and political employments of
such technologies?
4. How can we re-purpose information flows used by parametric design processes away
from their conventional determination as private property towards a more democratic inter-
active field?
Page 13.
Panel 3: Designing subjectivities, curating new models of sociality
Benjamin H. Bratton: The Always Partial System: For an Inhuman Parametricism
Andrs Jaque: Architecture as Rendered Society
Parametricism involves a fundamental shift in how architects represent their projects and
perform their labor; away from the physical drawing and towards the virtual model. With
this shift, a host of new opportunities and problematics are set in motion. The idea of de-
sign changes entirely from a process of formal objectification to a process of never-ending
contingent optimization or versioning. As such, traditional ideas of authorship, materials and
craft are fundamentally de-stabilized, perhaps opening the way to a different architectural
pedagogy and practice, as well as other modes of imagining the social. New collaboration
models that erode categorical distinctions of expertise emerge, together with the possibility
of a radically democratized notion of agency. Political transparency, self-making capabilities,
a post-humanistic subject, and a politics of absolute contingency are all, arguably, figured
within the Parametricist discourse.
This panel will open with a brief outline of the philosophical dimensions of this parametric
futurism, and will be followed by papers by guest speakers and a discussion that explores the
following questions:
1. Might an indeterminate, non-essentialized parametric architecture be able to configure
the spatial ontologies of a democratic politics for the 21st century? And how should we think
pedagogy and practice in this direction?
2. How can studying the development of cybernetic data flow mechanisms help us under-
stand the seductive qualities of todays aesthetics of dynamic bureaucracy in all aspects of
digital design manufacture processes and information management systems?
3. Can and should we conceive of parametric data mining and processing without the need
for sociological models to imagine a genuinely democratic potential for Parametricism?
4. What forms of futuristic imagination, whether dangerous or desirable, is Parametricism as
a form of media unfolding today?
Page 14.
5. TIMETABLE:
Friday November 15th at the REDCAT
Keynote event:
Architecture and politics: Parametricism within or beyond liberal democracy?
a discussion with Reinhold Martin and Patrik Schumacher
6:30pm Doors open
7:00pm Conference and debate intro by Manuel Shvartzberg and Matthew Poole
7:15pm Reinhold Martin presentation
7:40pm Patrik Schumacher presentation
8:05pm Martin-Schumacher debate (moderated by MS and MP)
8:30pm Audience Q&A
9:00pm Event ends. Drinks in the lobby.
Saturday November 16th at the REDCAT
9:30am Doors open. Welcome, coffee and bagels
Panel 1: Introduction to Parametricism: historical and technological context
10:00am Panel intro by Matthew Poole
10:15am Phil Bernstein
10:40am Neil Leach
11:05am Christina Cogdell
11:30am Debate and audience Q&A
12:00pm Lunch Break
Above: Sketches from the Non-Linear Architecture Parametrics Workshop, 2010,
Tsinghua University, led by Daniel Gillen.
Page 15.
Panel 2: Parametricism, the commons and social representation
2:00pm Panel intro by Manuel Shvartzberg
2:15pm Peggy Deamer
2:40pm Teddy Cruz
3:05pm Laura Kurgan
3:30pm Debate and audience Q&A
4:00pm Coffee Break
Panel 3: Designing subjectivities, curating new models of sociality
4:45pm Panel intro by Matthew Poole
5:00pm Benjamin Bratton
5:25pm Andrs Jaque
5:50pm Debate and audience Q&A
6:20pm Closing remarks Manuel Shvartzberg and Matthew Poole
6:30pm Event ends. Drinks in the lobby.
Below: Tsinghua University Parametrics Workshop, 2010
Tutor Daniel Gillen, student project
Page 16.
Page 17.
6. BIOGRAPHIES:
CONFERENCE ORGANISERS:
Matthew Poole is a freelance curator and contemporary art theorist living in Los Angeles. His
curatorial projects and writing explore the contradictions of neoliberal politics and how they
are transforming contemporary art, curatorial practices, the built environment and the politi-
cal currencies of culture more generally. Before moving to LA, Matthew was the Director of
the Centre for Curatorial Studies, in the School of Philosophy & Art History at the University
of Essex, UK. His recent projects can be viewed online at: www.kynastonmcshine.org.uk
Manuel Shvartzberg is an architect and writer. He has worked for, among others, OMA/Rem
Koolhaas, and was project architect for David Chipperfield Architects in London, where he led
a number of international arts/cultural projects between 2006 and 2012. In 2008 he co-
founded the award-winning experimental practice Hunter & Gatherer, with which he has lec-
tured and made various projects on questions of contemporary art, architecture, and critical
theory. Since 2011 he has been teaching in Los Angeles, California, at CalArts and University
of Southern California. Manuel is currently based in New York City where he is enrolled in the
Ph.D in Architecture program and is a graduate fellow of the Institute for Comparative Litera-
ture and Society at Columbia University.
GUEST SPEAKERS:
Benjamin H. Bratton is a theorist whose work spans Philosophy, Art and Design. At the Uni-
versity of California, San Diego, he Associate Professor ofVisual Arts, Director of The UCSD
Design Theory and Research Platform and D:GP, The Center for Design and Geopolitics.His
research is situated at the intersections of contemporary social and political theory, com-
putational media & infrastructure, architectural & urban design problems, and the politics of
synthetic ecologies and biologies. Current work focuses on the political geography of cloud
computing, massively-granular universal addressing systems, and alternate models of eco-
logical governance. His next book, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, is forthcoming
from MIT Press.
Phillip G. Bernstein is a Vice President at Autodesk, a leading provider of digital design, en-
gineering and entertainment software, where he leads Strategic Industry Relations and is
responsible for setting the companys future vision and strategy for technology as well as
cultivating and sustaining the firms relationships with strategic industry leaders and associa-
tions. An experienced architect, Phil was formerly with Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects where he
managed many of the firms most complex commissions. Phil teaches Professional Practice
at the Yale School of Architecture where he received both his B.A. and his M.Arch. He is co-
editor of Building (In) The Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture (2010) and BIM In Aca-
demia (2011). He is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council and former Chair of the AIA
National Contract Documents Committee.
Page 18.
Christina Cogdell is a cultural historian who is a Chancellors Fellow and Associate Professor
in the Department of Design at the University of California at Davis. Her research investigates
the intersection of popular scientific ideas and cultural production, in particular art, architec-
ture and design. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin
(2001), her M.A. in American Studies from the University of Notre Dame (1994), and her B.A.
in American Studies from UT Austin (1991). She is the author of Eugenic Design: Streamlin-
ing America in the 1930s (2004, 2010), winner of the 2006 Edelstein Prize for outstanding
book on the history of technology, and co-editor with Susan Currell of the anthology Popu-
lar Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s (2006). Her work
has been included in Visual Culture and Evolution (2011), Art, Sex, and Eugenics (2008), and
published in Boom: A Journal of California, American Art, Design and Culture, Volume, Design
Issues and American Quarterly. She has received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation,
the American Council of Learned Societies, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Penn
Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania, the Wolfsonian Design Museum, the
Georgia OKeeffe Museum Research Center for the Study of American Modernism, and the
American Philosophical Society. She is currently writing her second monograph on todays
generative architecture in relation to recent scientific theories of self-organization, emer-
gence and the evolution of complex adaptive systems.
Teddy Cruz was born in Guatemala City. He obtained a Master in Design Studies at Harvard
University in 1997 and established his research-based architecture practice in San Diego,
California in 2000. He has been recognized internationally for his urban research of the Ti-
juana-San Diego border, and in collaboration with community-based nonprofit organizations,
such as Casa Familiar for advancing border immigrant neighborhoods as sites of cultural
production, from which to rethink urban policy and propose new models of inclusive housing
and civic infrastructure. In 1991 he received the prestigious Rome Prize in Architecture and in
2005 he was the first recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture On The City Prize, by
the Canadian Center of Architecture and the London School of Economics. In 2008 he was
selected to represent the US in the Venice Architecture Biennial and in 2011 he was a recipi-
ent of the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture
and was named one of the 50 Most Influential Designers in America by Fast Company Maga-
zine. Teddy Cruz is currently a professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts De-
partment at University of California, San Diego, and the co-founder of the Center for Urban
Ecologies.
Peggy Deamer is Assistant Dean and Professor of Architecture at Yale University. She is a
principal in the firm of Deamer Studio. She received a B.Arch. from The Cooper Union and a
Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her dissertation on Adrian Stokes emphasized the relation-
ship he explored between vision, the body, and craft. Articles by Ms. Deamer have appeared
in Assemblage, Praxis, Perspecta, Architecture and Psychoanalysis, and Harvard Design
Magazine, amongst others journals and anthologies. The work of her firm has appeared in
Dwell, The New York Times; Architectural Record and House and Garden, amongst others.
She is the editor of The Millennium House and Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Pre-
sent and co-editor of Re-Reading Perspecta; Building in the Future: Recasting Architectural
Labor; and BIM in Academia. Recent articles include The Changing Nature of Architectural
Work, in Design Practices Now Vol II, The Harvard Design Magazine no. 33; Detail Delibera-
tion, in Building (in) the Future: Recasting Labor in Architecture; Practicing Practice, in Per-
specta 44; Work, in Perspecta 47; Design and Contemporary Practice in Architecture from
the Outside; and Marx, BIM, and Contemporary Labor, in BIM Futures, 2013.
Page 19.
Andrs Jaque is an architect whose work explores the role that architecture plays in the
making of societies. In 2003 he founded the Office for Political Innovation, a trandisciplinary
agency engaged with the making of an ordinary urbanism out of the association of hetero-
geneous architectural fragments. Jaque has lectured at a number of universities around the
world, including Berlage Institue, Columbia University GSAPP, Princeton University, Bezalel
Academy, Universidad Javeriana de Bogota, and the Instituto Politecnico di Milano, amongst
others. His work has been exhibited at the Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum in Basel, the
Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM), the Biennale di Venezia, and at the Museum of
Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. He is also the author of other works like Teddy House
(Vigo, 2003, 2005), Mousse City, (Stavanger, 2003), Peace Foam City (Ceuta, 2005), Skin
Gardens (Barcelona, 2006), the Museo Postal de Bogot (Bogot, 2007), Rolling House for
the Rolling Society (Barcelona, 2009), the House in Never Never Land (Ibiza, 2009), the ES-
CARAVOX, (Madrid, 2012), Hnsel and Gretels Arenas (Madrid, 2013). He is currently teaching
at GSAPP, Columbia University.
Laura Kurgan is Associate Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture
Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, where she directs the Visual Studies cur-
riculum, the Spatial Information Design Lab and is Co-Director of the Advanced Data Visuali-
zation Project. She is the author of Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics
(Zone Books, 2013). Her work explores things ranging from digital mapping technologies to
the ethics and politics of mapping, building intelligence, and the art, science and visualization
of big and small data. Her work has appeared at the Cartier Foundation in Paris, the Venice
Architecture Biennale, the Whitney Altria, MACBa Barcelona, the ZKM in Karlsruhe, and the
Museum of Modern Art. She was the winner of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellow-
ship in 2009.
Neil Leach is a Professor at the University of Southern California. He has also taught at the
AA, Columbia GSAPP, Cornell University, DIA, IaaC and SCI-Arc. He is the author, editor and
translator of 24 books, including Rethinking Architecture, The Anaesthetics of Architecture,
Designing for a Digital World, Digital Tectonics, Digital Cities, Machinic Processes, Swarm Intel-
ligence, Scripting the Future, Fabricating the Future and Camouflage. He has been co-curator
of a series of international exhibitions including the Architecture Biennial Beijing. He is current-
ly a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Fellow working on robotic fabrication technologies
for the Moon and Mars.
Reinhold Martin is Associate Professor of Architecture in the Graduate School of Architec-
ture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, where he directs the PhD program
in architecture and the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.
He is a member of Columbias Institute for Comparative Literature and Society as well as the
Committee on Global Thought. Martin is a founding co-editor of the journal Grey Room and
has published widely on the history and theory of modern and contemporary architecture.
He is the author of The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space
(MIT Press, 2003), and Utopias Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again (Minnesota,
2010), as well as the co-author, with Kadambari Baxi, of Multi-National City: Architectural Itin-
eraries (Actar, 2007). In 2012, Martin co-curated with Barry Bergdoll Foreclosed: Rehousing
the American Dream, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, for which he and Bergdoll
also co-edited the exhibition catalogue. Currently, Martin is working on two books: a history of
the nineteenth century American university as a media complex, and a study of the contem-
porary city at the intersection of aesthetics and politics.
Page 20.
Patrik Schumacher is partner at Zaha Hadid Architects and founding director at the AA
Design Research Lab. He joined Zaha Hadid in 1988 and has since been the co-author of
many key projects, a.o. MAXXI the National Italian Museum for Art and Architecture of the
21st century in Rome. In 2010 he won the Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize for
excellence in architecture. Patrik Schumacher studied philosophy, mathematics, and architec-
ture in Bonn, London and Stuttgart, where he received his Diploma in architecture in 1990.
In 1999 he completed his PHD at the Institute for Cultural Science, Klagenfurt University. In
1996 he founded the Design Research Laboratory with Brett Steele, at the Architectural
Association in London, and continues to teach in the program. Since 2000 Patrik Schumacher
is also guest professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 2010 and 2012 he pub-
lished the two Volumes of his theoretical opus magnum The Autopoiesis of Architecture. His
lectures and essays in architectural theory are available at www.patrikschumacher.com. In
2002 Patrik Schumacher curated Latent Utopias - Experiments within Contemporary Ar-
chitecture and he is currently planning the exhibition Parametricism The New International
Style.
Below:
Port to Port, Advanced Data Visualization Project courtesy of SIDL (Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia
University), in collaboration with Thomson Reuters Research Unit. Project Team:
Laura Kurgan, Project Director, Jen Lowe, Research Associate and Data Visualization
Page 21.
8. SPONSORS:
We are extremely grateful to Autodesk for sponsoring this event. Their generous support has
made possible the promise of a very exciting and important public event that will bring to a
wider audience hitherto unexamined issues related to the burgeoning of parametric and
algorithmic scripting tools in design and architecture that have wide reaching consequqnces
for all our futures.
Autodesk is a world leader in 3D design software for entertainment, natural resources,
manufacturing, engineering, construction, and civil infrastructure.
Autodesk helps people imagine, design and create a better world. Everyonefrom design
professionals, engineers and architects to digital artists, students and hobbyistsuses
Autodesk software to unlock their creativity and solve important challenges.
For more information visit autodesk.com or follow @autodesk.
Founded in 1982, Autodesk is headquartered in San Rafael, California.
www.autodesk.com
We are also very grateful for eVolo Architecture Magazine for their support in promoting this
event as our media sponsor.
eVolo is an architecture and design journal focused on technological advances, sustainability,
and innovative design for the 21st Century. Our objective is to promote and discuss the most
avant-garde ideas generated in schools and professional studios around the world. It is a
medium to explore the reality and future of design with up-to-date news, events, and
projects.
www.evolo.us
Page 22.
9. CONTACT DETAILS:
Matthew Poole
coloursandstyles@btinternet.com
tel: +1-323-344-6033
Manuel Shvartzberg

mshvartzberg@outlook.com
Websites:
aestheticsandpolitics.calarts.edu/conferences
www.redcat.org/event/politics-parametricism
Below: Image courtesy of Peter Vikar
And yet, what we need is the
intelligence and imagination to
work out systemic alternatives to
the status quo. Architecture can
help directly by demonstrating
possibilities that operate on
different premises than those
operating a hegemonic system of
systems in which life and death
are variables in a great game.
In architecture, form is a
precondition for politico-economic
immanence; it is among
architectures ways of being in the
world. As a discourse, architecture
mediates social and economic
relations by translating or
transcoding them into formal
equivalents. Analyze these forms
and you are analyzing the world.
Reinhold Martin
Interviewed in Thresholds No. 40, 2012, MIT Journal of Architecture.
Page 24.
Image courtesy of Synthesis Design + Architecture
Occupy Wall Street, 2011