Parametric Urbanism

Input: the incessant feed of raw physical and numerical data providing a foundation upon which all proper and responsive parametric design thrives. Variations of innovative data response exist all around, from the simple mechanical technology found in transition lens sunglasses to the complex algorithm of preferential and personalized data tracking that drives suggestions and network connections in such social media giants as YouTube, Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Architecture is primarily a physical art aimed to provide a sturdy and socially responsive solution to shelter. At its core architecture thrives on the ability of a trained designer to ascertain the needs and requirements of his client and craft a structure to meet those needs all the while providing just the proper combination of stability, utility, and beauty. It is necessary for an architect to marry ecologically considerate forms functioning in harmony to nature with subjective beauty, as a design proposal lacking in either element will respectively be poorly responsive to its contextual or, quite frankly, just plain ugly.

Peter Eisenmann's City of Culture
ecologically considerate form or subjective beauty?

Eisenmann’s City of Culture: parametrically modeled

Granted, beauty is subjective and contextual approach is not absolute, but raw data processing (in the form of numerical analysis) is rarely undertaken during the process of design at which a building’s form is crafted in response to its physical context. Sure, it would be false to say architects do not take in a variety of numerical data. However other than the raw data of solar calculations, localized demographic analysis, and financial assessment (to name a few) architects practicing parametric architecture and parametric urbanism craft their buildings largely in a subjective process that depends more on client need and design instinct than on specific numerical analysis. However, in an age saturated with data and input of all forms, architecture is beginning to respond and inform its surroundings based on objective figures gleaned from such existing technologies as GIS (geographic information systems) and solar analysis.

So does this entail an architectural response fully responsive to numerical information gathered from digital archives and up-to-the-minute data input? Not in the least. Architects must still serve as the parametric interpreters of context to process objective/subjective data and produce a considerate response to the unique and capricious whims of vacillating and objective value-based input. Perhaps Tim Love says it best that at one end of parametric design is “gee-whiz formmaking” – that is, blobitecture, sculpture-buildings, all the frills of too-eager form giving; while at the other end of the spectrum lies “a [purely] metric-based emphasis on social and/or ecological relevance.” He calls for architects to strike a much more measured stance.

“It’s too often the case that the process of creating forms by inputting and manipulating data does not require the designer develop a nuanced and comprehensive design strategy; and the process itself can produce a spurious and easy complexity that masks the absence of that more expansive approach. In some projects, for instance, specific cultural, social, and physical contexts are deployed mainly as tactics for autonomous form making.” - Tim Love

As data coalesces and consolidates to a manageable level of processing, a vastly growing pool of “input” streams begin to emerge. Architects must now more then ever act with wisdom and discretion toward the tools and responsibilities of the profession; an architect must not be caught up on the pure pragmatics of parametric design to respond to yes/no 1/0 data inputs, neither should he be obsessed over pure form. A balanced approach is key.

The beauty of such advancement lies in parametric thinking. Certain materials and systems can react to input on the fly, whilst other more entrenched forms will likely not change over the course of their built-lifespan. Architects must act in either case to appropriately respond to long and short-term vacillations of context. Parametric tools yield a powerful method of processing data on both fronts. A well-constructed building can provide a parametric shell fully responsive in form to any aspect of its context. This form can be based on any number of processed data input streams. However, once constructed a building’s form is very unlikely to change and specific place-based material technologies come much more into play. Parametric design in this sense can be applied equally at macro and micro scales, in each case reacting as needed to any range of social, economic, formal, ecological, and material data inputs.

So what lies in store for parametric design? What does the future hold as architecture adopts the tenets of such an emerging technology? The key lies in one of architecture’s hottest metaphrases- “Yes is more.” Preached by Bjarke Ingalls of the Danish Firm BIG, “Yes is more” calls architects to embrace all inputs, and links parametric design as a viable – if not mandatory – tool in the progression of the field from simply its ability to be fully inclusive of all elements in a designer’s thought process to physically conveying them in the form and function of the building itself.

BIG's Danish Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010

Design process
integrates form and function

By responding to specific parameters and limitations of parametric design and by allowing buildings to respond and function in kind (adapting to shifts in climate, user location/preference, contextual keys, and input-based data response) architecture may grow to accommodate and spryly respond to the needs and ecological leads of our modern age.


WORKS CITED:
Schumacher, Patrik. "The Parametric City." The Parametric City. 2010. Web.
http://patrikschumacher.com/Texts/The%20Parametric%20City.html

Christo

My pastor in Cape Town was named Christo. He led (and as far as I know, still leads) Cape Town's CommonGround Inner City church as a warm-hearted but straight-shooting and to-the-point warrior for Christ.  During my first few weeks living in Cape Town I didn't meet a lot of Christians or "white people" in Bo-Kaap (that last term sounds incredibly racist now, but that's what people called it there!) CommonGround, a church attended primarily by "whites" from outside Bo-Kaap, was just a few blocks from my apartment and it was easy enough for me to get to church, but coming back I always felt as if I was going back into a real war zone of anti-Christianity. For all the strengths of CommonGround as an "inner-city" community of people surrendering their lives to Christ I hardly saw anyone from the church walk back and engage with the inner-city it was surrounded by.

One day while out on a morning jog through the Cape Company Gardens I reached the far south end of the park and stopped to stretch, noticing a man huffing and puffing toward my same terminal end of the path where I stood.  As he reached the end of the park and looked up, I gasped and realized it was none other than Pastor Christo himself!

Needless to say I was shocked. I thought Christo must have lived far from town and commuted in to lead the inner-city church every day. But this was not true. It turns out that Christo also lived in Bo-Kaap (very near to me in fact), and as one of the community's few Christians he was having daily interactions with Muslims - as a pastor and guide for CommonGround InnerCity, he was fully immersed in the community he pastored!

Though I have now fully moved in at my OTR apartment, I still have a lot of happy baggage around that I have been relishing and rolling around, hesitant to pack some of it away into drawers or cabinets to gather dust.  One such article of happy baggage is my sermon notes from one of Christo's most impassioned teachings, which I have paraphrased below (OK, try imagine this spoken with an Afrikaans accent as thick as Mrs. H. S. Balls Chutney):

“I recently read about an incident in a national park in America where a devastating fire cause great damage and destruction. After the fire had settled, a group of game rangers walked up the mountain to assess the damage. They were surprised to find a skeleton of a big bird in one of the trees, almost completely covered with ash. Why did this bird not fly away from the flames, they wondered. Upon closer inspection they found  three little chicks – alive under their mother’s wings, which protected them from the flames. 

Psalm 91:2-4 read as follows: 
‘I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.’ 

As a gospel centred community we are increasingly learning to find refuge under God’s wings and putting our trust in Him. Let our lives bear witness to this to our city, wherever we find ourselves. 

So what can we take from this?  As I look back at this teaching and think how Christo was just like that mother eagle taking any scorn and rejection from Muslim neighbors (although truthfully he loves them regardless of their faith). I think how Jesus, in the same way the mother eagle died to save its baby chicks, died on the cross for our sins. He gave his body as a shield for us against the world's evils and his cleansing blood set us free from the condemnation of our carnal sins.

Now how is this relevant to living in Cincinnati. This city is no more protected than Cape Town. The same evils and challenges facing Bo-Kaap threaten Over-the-Rhine as well.  But our role.  To be the vanguard of community.  To not shrink from danger and personal and spiritual threat but to stand firm and boldly to love our neighbors as Christ called us to.  To be the mother eagle for anyone helpless and innocent of the community, even if it means giving our life and the easiness of our own lifestyles.  This is what it means to be in community.

--------------------------------------------

I am not sure how to apply this, however, when the helpless victim is a man easily thirty years older than I am.  My good friend and local watchdog-downstairs Tom Banks (who always hangs his head out of his window and hams up the news with any passers-by, asking if people are safe and shoo-ing along anyone with ill intentions) was just evicted yesterday.  Tom is one of the greatest things about Over-the-Rhine.  Everything about him radiates "humanity," from the cheerful way he looks out for everyone passing by to the humble disposition he shows for strangers and friends alike.

As Over-the-Rhine is being gentrified and rent fees began to increase up last year, Tom began to be unable to pay his own rent. Skyrocketing cost-of-living expenses have finally won the battle of gentrification, and as I write this two men are carrying Tom's mattress out to the kerb, leaving him with only one blanket and the clothes on his back. I've never witnessed anything like this, and I'm not sure what to do.  Should I let him live in my apartment until the weather warms? Should I help him with means and shelter? Matthew 9:12 says "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick." And as the building stock in OTR is either labeled unofficially as "abandoned" or "gentrified beyond all reason" people like Tom, who bring so much life and love to this neighborhood, are being evicted. I'm not sure how to act but I believe that Tom is going to go into shock without a home. I honestly don't know if he will make it through the year. For my part I will look out for him just as he has looked out for me...

Please pray for Tom and the people of Over-the-Rhine. I can't be their mother bird to lay my own life out and protect these guys from forces far beyond their and my own control, but I'm giving my time and willingness to God.  Whatever happens down here, He in in control.

"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" Matthew 25 40

Nate

The Return

SIX MONTHS LATER...

Well, a lot has happened since the Muezzin. I am no longer living in Bo-Kaap and plenty of exciting times have come and gone (though some have lingered and many others are bound to happen yet!)


Looking at all the "draft" posts I have lined up over the last two months where I told myself "hey Nate, go back and start posting again!" I dare say I haven't been the most reliable to share stories and experiences from an architectural perspective (sheesh there are at least seven strange stories I have been waiting to tell!)  BUT in the meantime Twitter has been far more reliable, timely, interactive, and - yes - slightly addictive -- @nammitt if you're into that thing.


So, unless there are any requests (Bueller? Bueller?) I'm going to make an effort to share a story every week or so. Hopefully. Starting off with this post and a fantasticly terse quote by Mr. Alan Keightley

"Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."

-Alan Keightley


Isaiah 6:8 "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"


Go be bold!
Nate

Cities - the map

I love maps. Here are some I have drawn for fun recently (and edited in photoshop).

Though none of these maps depict an existing urban location, they are each influenced by a real city somewhere the world... see if you can guess which real city goes with the drawing!

built on a marsh and named in honor
of a general with wooden teeth

most of a medieval city was demolished by
an emperor to make way for a new
metropolis with wide, radial boulevards

settled by the dutch and later the british
 hint: not in the USA

every city in italy. choose your favorite.

I have been thinking about cities a lot lately. South Africa has a bizarre history of urban planning, ranging from the beautiful mountain-oriented axial layout of Cape Town to the gridded streets of Joburg, to the hilly assemblage of homes in Durban, to the mazes created for suppressing movement and assembly of Africans in many apartheid townships across the country.

I will be blogging about cities for the next few posts - what brings them together? what breaks them apart? and what role do architects have to make them better for everyone?

The city is all right. To live in one
Is to be civilized, 
Stay up and read
Or sing and dance 
All night and see sunrise
By waiting up 
instead of getting up.
—Robert Frost, A Masque of Mercy