Architecture can be hard to understand for people outside this domain. But not when Patrik Schumacher, company director at Zaha Hadid Architects, explains it to a large audience. It’s not hard to guess that he is also a professor, since the presentation was very vivid and since he paid attention to the public. As co-director of the Design research Laboratory, he is also interested in experiment, since this is the way they work in order to create such beautiful projects.

Schumacher was invited to talk in Bucharest at the end of the two weeks workshop where the focus was on different energies which exist in a given environment, such as wind. These energies were identified, simulated and publicly presented by teams made of architects. The researcher’s paper was on Parametricism as a style. What is that?

photo Andreea Chindris

It’s what the Zaha Hadid Studio works on, trying to create a dogma, indeed, while Modernism should be seen as taboo, his words exactly. There was an ontological shift from rigid shapes to more malleable materials and shapes, and this is very present in their works. The world is dominated by lines, but when entering the logics of this dynamic field, they changes their shape, creating a more fluid line and, therefore, a fluid starting point. Parametricism is a style that integrates different elements in order to give a new coherence to the result. Each element brings its own dynamics and when thinking about the medium where it has to fit, the building has to take into consideration the space, as it is, how it relates to other building and to the topography of the space.

Kartal-Pendik Masterplan, Istanbul, Turkey, 2006
photo patrikschumacher.com

Of course, there is the battle between functional and formal, and the result should be an esthetically beautiful building as well as functional and related strictly to the needs of the audience. And Parametricism is vey aware of the importance of the public.

As for the principles that guide this style, we must mention that there are forbidden the rigid forms, repetition and collage of unrelated elements that give a specific structure. Among the principles that do guide the Zaha Hadid studio are the attention to nature, soft forms, differentiation.

photo Andreea Chindris

Here is an example of what a building designed by their studio looks like:

Zaha Hadid Architects – Azerbaijan Cultural Centre, Baku
photo patrikschumacher.com

The researcher made it very clear why the studio wins so many projects: it’s because of their high-performance and because the mayors and politicians understand their interest in the city where they would build a structure and think ahead – when they make a proposal, they also think how the work would integrate in the city and how other similar buildings could change the general aspect. Also, they do not create sameness, meaning that they play a lot with structures while they are in the research phase in order to get to a different shape, created for that specific project. He is also interested in the history of architecture and tried to place Parametricism in the general context. He talked about  the fact that architecture is very linked to a specific period of time and to politics, and Parametricism comes after the fall of Communism in a period when the public is important and when there is a movement towards a holistic view of a town and of each element.

Galaxy Soho
photo archdaily.com

Civil Courts – Madrid, 2007, Accentuating Environmentally Adaptive Façade
photo patrikschumacher.com

by Andreea Chindriș