Parametricism Does Urban Science have a future? At the city scale, we’re looking to uncover consistent trends across observable patterns...to find hidden rules and relationships that underpin urban phenomena. At the building and neighborhood scale we tinker with pre-programmed parameters to uncover the effects of decision-making on the urban fabric through simulation. At the façade scale we think about how surfaces can adapt to changing environmental conditions and uses. Broadly speaking, these trends point to a compelling synthesis of biology, computer science and design thinking, with an apparent focus on parameterizing adaptation in the name of sustainability. ...One critique of the analytical approach to city-making is that it fails to account for the nuances and complexity of actual human behavior...Urban designers often find algorithms purporting to describe human activity disturbing because such tools can rob the designer of his ability to create a novel human experience. But patterns in biological systems never indicate predetermined states, instead they are signals of constraint on a system. Put another way, life operating within constraint generates patterns (that can be described with algorithms!). Is it not the designer’s task to problem solve precisely within this domain?
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 20:15:24 +0000
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