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Head Banging: Engineering Neutrality + the Parametric Ceiling
Author(s) -
Hughes Francesca
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
architectural design
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.128
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1554-2769
pISSN - 0003-8504
DOI - 10.1002/ad.992
Subject(s) - ceiling (cloud) , neutrality , context (archaeology) , ambivalence , modernism (music) , architectural engineering , architecture , sociology , aesthetics , law and economics , art , law , art history , engineering , history , visual arts , political science , psychology , psychoanalysis , archaeology , structural engineering
Through the work of Unit 15 at the Architectural Association in London, Francesca Hughes and Noam Andrews have been exploring the limits of parametric systems. Here Francesca Hughes questions whether parametricism has now hit a ‘developmental ceiling’. What are the full cultural implications of the promised instantaneity of completed components in architectural production? Where does the ‘strange engineered neutrality’ of ‘optimisation’ take us? Is there a real danger that an ambivalence to context is returning us to the tabula rasa of Modernism?. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.