Patrik Schumacher

” Each space is in fact a communication. It invites its visitors to participate and gives them clues on how should they behave, what to do. But people are no longer satisfied with simple ordering of space with rigid forms and strict compartmentalization. They need to communicate with each other and move swiftly. This is why rooms should not be separated but rather interconnected. Spaces should be constructed in such a way that everyone can easily see, find and communicate with everyone else.”-Schumacher

Parametricism by Patrik Schumacher is not a style, but a continuous process of research, a movement which tries to solve and bind relational solutions to every spaces of human scale. Schumacher is predicting the future by a continual research of these platforms that have the capability to process large quantities of data for the development of complex topological structures and environments, as well as new understandings of space, both real and virtual.  Being a theorist and as well as an architect he is making a “theoretical foundation” a research line of a completely new style in architecture which will probably dramatically change the way the word looks, and a few steps are being implemented at this point in time but still not evident being far as it came to a point that it has become the bible of architecture. Tackling and defining what the future will be, what is behind of all this attempt and movement? what made Schumacher realize all this diversity, and relation to what humans should live in?

He made modernism a flaw in architecture and open up an idea that every human should move in a fluidic way, in a natural way that lets them communicate with each other as well as create a move that would enhance on the way they feel and sense that there is a need of relation of spaces to humans and one another, rather than a way that people walk in a point, to a point, creating a space that defines them without realizing that there is a need of connection a relationship and a sensible feeling to each one of them, and a space that relates them to each other. Architecture should increase interaction and information exchange, and can no longer insist on physical separation, it should resemble how nature acts to its environment, how nature construct itself to adapt to it. He explains that architecture should not push people to go in a straight line, it should not dictate them on where to go, but allow them to self-organize in complex matrix of differentiated spaces and enables them to create multiple communication scenarios, and ordering social processes in space that is a true natural communication.

The article relates the reality that we are in the continuous process of making more complex matrixes for a more complex social processes that has been waiting to unfold. this is portrayed by parametricism, a continuous free flow of lines, in every different spaces, in a space there should be many options to go, and many things to view in a simultaneous way, there are choices to go sites to view, a choices to be made, and more importantly not to miss everything.

In relation to other article, parametricism speaks about that architecture should not create an environment of grids, an environment that dictates where people should go, an atmosphere created to have one goal, but rather architecture should create a feeling of “choice”, a living space that every human have a choice and an environment that adapts to that choices, parametricism is a feeling and an act of connecting each other by means of parametric computational behavior of humanity. In Conclusion to parametricism, it is belief is to have a more complex way of arranging the hierarchy of architecture, the scale and proportion of it,  trying to break the old laws of architecture which makes sense of today’s challenges that humanity is facing, it is trying to look for choices that humanity would take, rather than instilling that answers to them, parametricism is introducing questions for humanity to have answers and create their own different interaction and communication with each other, having a difference in order, in form, in environment that it creates and an element that people interact with each other, these is what parametricism is trying to change, trying to convince that architecture should adapt to what humanities choices will be, rather than controlling what humanity should be.

Coming up to this point and reasoning, wondering what Architecture should be for the next generation and trying to get out to what we are already are in, Architecture should have a good reminder that matrixes and parametric reasoning should not be controlled by animation and technological advancement computing, rather than it should have a sense of individuality, a character and a behavior which human can interact. Is there a need of creating a second nature built environment? or is there a need to create a natural environment that goes back to its roots? parametricism is having a built environment that is unified, that is interconnected to what humanity have choices, an environment that let them interact and interconnect with each other, but the questions will remain unanswered of how will it suite to that different choices of human, on how would it have an impact to that human choices?  I firmly believe  it will have a big impact on the future, parametricism is  striving to work smarter, more integrated, and more efficient, but questions remain on how would it change the face of the world, and how would it change the laws of architecture that is already proven, it is a great risk, as well as a great opportunity to open up new possibilities of what architecture would really be in the future.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe the space as a diversity of lines, which each get their identity from the environment. They describe the complete set of connections of particles as the Rhizome.

The rhizome is like a structure of roots, though it is different from the roots of a tree, because it is asymmetric and decentralized. It can be In that way the rhizome can be combined and connected in infinite. In a rhizome any given point can be connected to another (principle of rhizome 1+2; connections and Heterogenety). The rhizome has many entryways. Rhizome is based on multiplicities. The multiplicity should be treated as a substantive (principle of rhizome 3; Multiplicities).

The rhizome might be better understood if you compare it to the root structure of the grass or a potato – an unbounded structure which connects different units together and it grows in between and has no units, only dimensions. All points are always joined in a movement from one identity to another.

The rhizome is not tracing, but it is mapping. “The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome.”¹ (principle of rhizome 5+6; Decalcomania and Cartography) When you try to replicate the rhizome, it will only from new ramifications and relations (principle of rhizome 4; Asignifyring rupture). This means that nothing is rooted and no truth is given.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari questions the western worlds rational and logical approach to knowledge and make patterns/tracings of the mind (fx Sigmund Freud´s Psychoanalyze) and for example the planned cities. Is the most of the eastern world based on  rhizomes?

Concerning architecture the rhizome has many aspects. One is the multiplicity of interactions which might be made possible through architecture. Using the thoughts of rhizome can help  to erase borders and hierarchy in the structures of masterplans or building design. Architecture without starting and ending – the architecture of gradients (read Sui Fujimoto).  The reference to rhizome could be the internet (decentralized and infinite entryways etc.) and shanty towns or refugee camps (growing, decaying and spreading by the not planned events of necessities). But how can we “control” the rhizome? And where does this put the architect? It is more less the same paradox, that there were with the atmospherically machinery at “new babylon” (Constant Niewenhuys).

The hard task is to design a space that takes into account that all the elements of the spaces is combined and are defining the identity by the rhizome. The rhizome is like the “short term memory” and we plan our cities and understand them by our “long term memory”. It is easy to relate to the known realities in a city, but never the unknown factors of the city.

We should as architects try to understand the “strata” (homogenisis) as the inner process of the rhizome (like Manuel DeLanda). In that way we give our design the best condition to perform best, when learn about the virtual potentiality. But we should be aware of the rhizome, which I do not think we can control. The rhizome is the uncontrolled environment (selfconsistent aggregat), which direct the design in different directions. D´arcy Wentworth Thomsen was also aware that it not was only the evolution (Darwin) that were driving the evolution of the species. The environment (homology) and the rhizome had a deep impact of the growth and forms of for example branches and human faces.

A possible topic for my personal research could be to investegate, how architects over time have been using the digital logics to explore the rhizome in architecture. Like the “Blur” (by Diller Sciofidio Renfro) tries to deal with the rhizome, in a more or less controlled way. 

The next topic could be how we can learn our digital tools to use the “short term” memory and create more “real” rhizomes? But I think we should rise a very crucial question; are we destroying the rhizome by trying to understand it and program it? Maybe the rhizome is best without the definition.

¹ Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari  A Thousand Plateaus, – page 12

Picture: http://emptyencore.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/1219079139.jpg