Port to Port, Advanced Data Visualization Project courtesy of SIDL (Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia University)

THE POLITICS OF PARAMETRICISM is an international conference to be held at REDCAT, in Downtown Los Angeles, California, at 7-9pm on Friday 15th & 10am-6.30pm on Saturday 16th of November 2013.

A range of international guest speakers from the industries and academic spheres of architecture and urbanism, including Phil Bernstein, Benjamin Bratton, Christina Cogdell, Teddy Cruz, Peggy Deamer, Andrés Jaque, Laura Kurgan, Neil Leach, Reinhold Martin & Patrik Schumacher will explore urgent questions that concern the social and political ramifications of the spreading influence of parametric scripting software as the potential standard industry tool for architecture, urban planning and many other aspects of design.

PARAMETRICISM has recently been heralded as the new avant-garde in the industries of architecture, urban design, industrial design, and digital information modeling: the natural heir to the passing out of favor of Postmodernist and Deconstructionist models. An increasing number of architecture projects and industrially manufactured products are now designed and realized using digital software based on parametric or algorithmic scripting platforms. These platforms 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.

As the stream of new tools and products proliferates, in the apparently infinite expansion of the ‘repertoire’ of design functions Parametricism allegedly affords, critical questions regarding these cultural and technological phenomena are often overtaken by the popular seductive aesthetic and alluring futurism such design tools and products represent. This conference seeks to address this issue, where we see ‘innovation’ overtaking its own ‘interrogation’.

This conference is organized by Matthew Poole and Manuel Shvartzberg, and hosted by the MA Aesthetics & Politics Program at CalArts and The Gallery at REDCAT. The principal sponsor is Autodesk. The media sponsor is eVolo.

For more information visit REDCAT

Peter Vikar

Synthesis Design + Architecture

Synthesis Design + Architecture (Xiamen Dream City Tower)

Tsinghua University Parametrics Workshop led by Daniel Gillen