PARAMETRICS OPINION

Doug Joyce: Parametrics Hand Drawn

25 August 2011

Monica Ponce de Leon offers another opinion about parametrics and design via the Architect's Newspaper:

"There is a difference between what we can do digitally versus what we can do through pencil and paper. Thus while the output will differ, the presence of the author in the final outcome is, at the end, no different. Parametric modeling and scripting, for example, are often named as the usual suspects in the automatization of design. In actuality, parametric modeling software depends on the user designing form and then crafting the parameters for its variations. Script, by definition is a computer programming language that allows control over software by the end user (the designer). They are both tools, whose intent is precisely to give us more control over the design."

This offers another approach to the debate, stating that parametrics is always under the control of the creative person. It is another tool to make architecture, and great cities.

The focus of the discussion should be: Does parametric design embody a set of pre-ordained rules (complex as they may be), or is it a tool to better craft the work?