A Glove for a Single Hand

I wrote this review in October 2018, after Patrik Schumacher's lecture at the Days of Oris in Zagreb, and published it in three parts on Instagram. I bring it here eight years later, with minor corrections and one added paragraph. In the meantime, in May 2026, Dezeen devoted an entire series to parametricism, concluding that it has not become the "hegemonic" style Schumacher had hoped for. In an interview for the same series, Schumacher himself says that parametricism is still "a drop in the ocean".

A reflection of the lecture by Patrik Schumacher (PS) on his research and professional practice (Zaha Hadid Architects) at the Days of Oris 2018.

The name "parametricism" is in itself somewhat suspect, since in a natural reading it encompasses architecture as such: which architecture does not begin from parameters; which architecture is not parametric(ist)? Parametricism, the "style" of computer-generated organic forms arising from various generative processes, has its fractal incarnations from the scale of the city to the scale of architecture, interiors, furniture, clothing, jewellery. It begins in the 1990s and, according to an article by PS ("The Progress of Geometry as Design Resource", Log 43, 2018, "The Issue of Geometry"), from c. 1993 to the present it has already gone through four iterations (foldism, blobism, swarmism, tectonism).

PS rejects as a misconception the claims that parametricism is a mere formalist category, although the misconceptions, if they are misconceptions, are at least partly justified. PS's parametricism refers to the parametric generation and optimization of architecture, in which disposition, structure and form are amalgamated into a single architectural body that plays three roles simultaneously. Complex forms, impossible to design and build without the help of computational tools and high technology, are its main and possibly its only wholly original feature in relation to the rest of the architectural canon.

PS considers parametricism the only fitting paradigm for the current, post-Fordist era. He believes that cities will soon take on a parametricist appearance, just as they were gradually transformed into a modernist one. At the scale of urban planning, he would generate spatial plans with the same principles and tools as buildings. However, for cities at the scale of architecture to look the way PS imagines them, the process, i.e. the style, of their design would have to be a parameter set in advance among the conditions for implementation. Parametricism, in that case, would be not so much a result of parameters as a parameter in itself, and an arbitrary one at that. PS, however, also has a broader vision of a social system with a socio-economic underpinning. The assumption is that it will be economically possible, perhaps optimal, to build in a parametricist way.

"When you have a printer, it makes no difference which pattern you print": this is the analogy with which PS illustrates how he imagines the "post-Fordist future", namely in terms of the cost-effectiveness of producing buildings with a large number of variations. However, the question arises: who produces these "printers", and what is the price of the "ink"? Considering the prices of, and consumers' experience with, the printer industry vulgaris, this analogy suddenly seems ominous. Besides, a problem lies hidden in the very premise of the analogy: if it makes no difference to the user which pattern he prints, what prevents him from "printing" Palladio's Renaissance villas and disfiguring the urban parametricist harmony? This brings us back to the conclusion that, at the urban scale, a homogeneous parametricism of architecture is in itself an arbitrary parameter.

PS legitimizes his architectural premises by appealing to social goals. The phrase "network society" was mentioned on several occasions. Yet a consensus on social and cultural values and goals is far from reality, although it is tacitly implied by the absence of any discussion of these open questions. These starting points, which inevitably also have a political and ideological dimension, are polarized in the case of parametricism and therefore call for an honest inventory of them before agendas begin to be slipped in through the medium of architecture.

Basing architecture on social premises is not without precedent: the first generation of modernism was also ideologically and politically coloured; however, as far as the architectural profession is concerned, that mouthful remained largely unchewed and was in the end abandoned.

Parametricism in fact shares a number of features with modernism: a technocratically derived formal language, internationalism, implementation at all scales (from the scale of the city to architecture, furniture, clothing, à la Bauhaus), a focus on efficiency, functionalism. In this light, it is perhaps not unjustified to see parametricism as an extension of modernism, its new, computer-generated 2.0 face.

As such, the criticisms levelled at modernism are applicable to parametricism as well. PS shows a prototype of a parametricist chair whose form would surely be Louis Sullivan's wet dream: its form is the literal, materialized diagram of the structural calculation of the loads in sitting. A few years earlier, Venturi, in an interview with Rem Koolhaas for OMA's boogazine Content, would say that architecture, in relation to function, should not be like a glove but like a mitten: it should give the fingers freedom to move.

The alternative is not new and does not call for new tools. Disposition does not necessarily follow use, but the other way round: the same disposition can have different uses. The building of today's Rectorate of the University of Zagreb (L. von Zettl, 1856–59) was built as a hospital, served as barracks and as a tobacco factory, and since 1882 has been the University building. In the domain of disposition, adaptation costs and operating costs are, in principle, inversely proportional: a building fully optimized for its use has the lowest operating costs, but changes in the specification of its use can mean costly adaptations. Nor is the ultimate flexibility of a completely open and empty space the answer: over time some particular arrangement of the space ossifies and becomes permanent, as happened with the Pompidou. Between the glove and the mitten lies an architecture that is derived not from a single optimized parameter but from the interrelation of several aspects (use, typology, disposition, scale, form, structure, envelope, cost and genius loci), each of which remains a separate layer and none of which swallows the others.

On a model of a parametrically derived spatial structure, PS demonstrates its lightness and hyper-efficiency: if any single rod is cut, the whole structure collapses. The question arises: is efficiency worth this much fragility, not only structural but also utilitarian? What is the useful life of a parametrically hyper-optimized building in a time of disruptive technologies that are transforming society and culture? Parametricism, for its part, if it is consistent with its mission statement, would be a glove that fits only a single hand, on which even the nails must always be the same length.

translated from Croatian with the help of AI