Parametric Regionalism

Philip Yuan , Founding Director of Shanghai-based firm Archi-Union Architects, applies parametric techniques to his design and research in China. Here he explains how Parametricism can provide a highly adaptive and open approach to architectural knowledge and spatial organisation, accommodating regional variations in culture and environment, through an emphasis on local climate, materials and craft traditions.     

Antoni Gaudí and Frei Otto: Essential Precursors to the Parametricism Manifesto

As Senior Architect to the Basilica of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Mark Burry has been ‘thinking parametrically’ for almost his entire career. Here he describes how his longstanding role overseeing the completion of Antoni Gaudí's masterpiece has afforded unique insights into the work of a great geometer and parametric thinker. Burry places the contribution of Gaudí alongside that of Frei Otto – the other eminent 20th-century Proto-Parametricist.     

Where to for Brazil's Cities? Citizen Empowerment or Global Marketing?

An awakening interest in public space in Brazilian cities is emphasising the value of existing civic areas. Guilherme Wisnik , a critic, curator and professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo, looks at the history and potential future of Brazil's urban spaces. He highlights how despite the introduction of innovative Modernist design in the mid-20th century, which forged ‘a new relationship between architecture, urbanism and landscape design’, more recently the country's cities have been subject to the vicissitudes of market and political forces.     

Intimacy: Eragatory's Experiments in Materiality,Deep Texture and Mood

Because of their textural and sensory qualities – even or uneven, smooth or rough, cold or warm, reflective or matt – particular materials tend to evoke particular moods. But this does not mean that their nature and structure cannot be played with in order to create surprising atmospheres. London-based design practice Eragatory's ‘Intimacy’ series of interiors does just that, producing visual anomalies that distort the viewer's material understanding of space. Isaie Bloch , the firm's founder, describes how.     

Architectural Patents and Open-Source Architectures: The Globalisation of Spatial Design Innovations (or Learning from ‘E99’)

Patents are the strongest form of intellectual property rights available internationally, so far unbeaten by open source as a body of innovation and know-how. Mark Garcia , senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture & Landscape at the University of Greenwich, London, here considers the pros and cons of the patent system for architects in the digital age: from issues over patent categorisation by type, to possibilities of micro-royalties through the capacity of design software to track every stage of input from multiple contributors.     

Fab-Union: A Collective Online to Offline Robotic Design Platform

Official architectural education in China remains very traditional and has yet to engage with the digital age. To counter this, Shanghai-based Fab-Union was set up in 2014 to establish a cross-disciplinary community – now over 10,000 strong – that is driving the emergence of digital crafts in the country. Here, its founder Philip Yuan and lead designer Hao Meng describe Fab-Union's online design platform, its offline collective design space, and its robotic factory that functions as an open research facility and fabrication workshop.     

Design Signals: The Role of Software Architecture and Paradigms in Design Thinking and Practice

Does the ontology of design software influence built form? Panagiotis Michalatos , lecturer in architectural technology at Harvard Graduate School of Design and a principal research engineer at Autodesk, Inc, here looks at how the move from drawing typologies to digital modelling since the mid-1990s has affected architectural aesthetics. He goes on to examine two more recent developments that may announce a further paradigm shift: granular tracking of design input, and data organisation practices in biomedics which, transferred to architecture, could allow for a more spatio-temporal approach.     

The Hinterland Urbanised?

What defines the urban? And can the non-urban necessarily always be classified as rural? Neil Brenner , Director of the Urban Theory Lab at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, reflects on the lack of an overarching theory to describe these realms, and argues that what we call the countryside or the hinterland has become key to the process of capitalist urbanisation.     

Actualising (Overlooked) Material Capacities

An emphasis on material synthesis is not without its pitfalls and challenges. Here Branko Kolarevic , Professor and Chair in Integrated Design at the University of Calgary Faculty of Environmental Design, alerts us to the dangers of overlooking materials' shifting capacities, which are so often scale dependent, while also disregarding existing materials in favour of the new or novel. As the potential grows for material systems in buildings to become more adaptive and to harness automation, Kolarevic describes some exciting developments that are taking place in dynamic facade design, providing the much-heralded promise of an efficient use of ambient energy.