Parametric Design in Urbanism: A Critical Reflection

Abstract

Parametric modelling run by the explicitly defined algorithms generating synchronically auditable dynamic forms and patterns, has become a prominent method especially in architecture. Though the use of parametric models has got wider in urban design, the critical reflection on the actual and possible application of the method in urbanism has fallen limited so far. The paper tends to relate parametric design with the contemporary understanding of urbanism with regards to the idea of design control in the the context of complexity. From this perspective, the actual performance of the model application in urban context is discussed with the renowned project of Kartal-Pendik Masterplan (Zaha Hadid Architects) in Istanbul, Turkey.

Keywords:

• Parametric design
• urban design
• generative urbanism
• design control and planning

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Miray Özkan, a city planner at Kartal Urban Development Association, Istanbul for the background information and valuable insight provided for the inquiry on Kartal master planning process, and Asst. Prof. Dr. İpek Gürsel Dino (METU) for her appreciated feedbacks at the phase of final revision.

Notes

1. Such a change in motivation is also to be ended up with a radical transformation in the settled perception of urban planning and design from designing to organization—or in Marshall’s (2009) term, ordering—.

2. As a term of bioscience, morphogenesis refers to the developmental process of a organism based on cellular growth and differentiation. In this sense, it connotes a kind of bottom-up process in pattern formation as opposed to the top-down processes in design (Alexander, 2002).

3. Later on, the extended version of article was published as a book by the MIT Press in 1978.

4. The quotation on the basic properties of their proposal apparently signifies the authors’ generative ideas on city form: ‘it is simultaneously an appeal for order and disorder, for the simple and complex, for the joint existence of permanent reference and random happening, of innovation and tradition’ (Rowe & Koetter, 1978, p. 8).

5. For an example to planning a (hypothetical) settlement only by the local design codes—without a blueprint—, see: Sorkin, M. (1993) Local Code: The Constitution of a city at 42 (degrees) N latitude, New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

6. For a thorough discussion on the concept, see: Alexander, E. R., Mazza, L., Moroni, S. (2012) ‘Planning Without Plans? Nomocracy or Teleocracy for Social-Spatial Ordering’, Progress in Planning 77(2), pp. 37 – 87.

7. Algorithm is basically a step-by-step procedure for reaching a decision on ill-defined problems. In of design computation, it is the computation procedure defining the type and quality of the elements and the sequence and timing of the operations involved (Terzidis, 2006, pp. 65, 66).

8. In addition to the parametric systems, linguistic systems based on the syntactic rules (i.e. shape grammar) and creative evolutionary systems based on genetic algorithms can be also considered within the class of generative design systems (Dino, 2012, p. 209).

9. Mathematically, parameter is an arbitrary constant or a variable in a formulaic expression. For instance, in y = ax + b, a and b are the parameters implying a constant value determining a point on the line (James & James, 1968, p. 263). That means though every parameter is categorically a variable, a variable would not necessarily function as a parameter. In this regard, what called as the ‘parameter’ as the factor having variational values in a design algorithm should be mathematically counted as the ‘metric variable’.

10. In evolutionary systems, generation repeats itself on the populations selected and recombined to achieve optimum solutions in time. A ‘seed-model’ is propagated into the population of alternative forms by means of a code. Within the emergent population, the most ‘successful’ ones are selected in accordance with a fixed fitness-function. Then the process is iterated till the ‘optimum’ solution is achieved (Bentley & Corne, 2002; Frazer, 1995, p. 65; Watanabe, 2002, p. 10). In this method, the designer’s main role is to determine the performance rule (code) system and fitness criteria. Without a need for human input, the rest (generation process) is run out of the direct control of the designer.

11. The project is designed by Dimitrie Stefanescu with the collaboration with D. Mila in the master’s degree studio in Ion Mincu, University of Architecture and Urbanism, Bucharest under the supervision of T. Florescu and S. Guta in 2010.

12. For the project, the designer used a parametric platform, called Grasshopper, which is an application within Rhino, digital design software.

13. Voronoi is a special technique to create cellular pattern in which the divisions are metrically optimized in accordance with the objects (called ‘seeds’) randomly distributed on space.

14. As clearly stated by the designer, the actual network configured by the universal grid and the attraction points, was only apparent (on the visualization screen) at the very late stage of the process in the project (Stefanescu, 2012).

15. For the original definition of the concept, see: Hillier, B., Leaman, A., 1974 ‘How Design Possible?’ Journal of Architectural Research 3(1), pp. 4 – 11.

16. With the perception motivation behind its definition, the idea of ‘field’ in Schumacher’s theory can be associated with the model of ‘force fields’ in the gestalt psychology of Kurt Lewin (cited in Rittel, H. (1964 [2010]) ‘Environments’, in (eds. J. P. Protzen, D. J. Harris) The Universe of Design: Horst Rittel’s Theories of Design and Planning, p. 87).

17. As a recent application of parametric modeling in urban context, Llabres and Rico (2012) suggest a design model based on the generation of a ‘catalogue-based (building) typologies’ and their parametric distribution on the overall pattern in relation to the specific constraints of the site.

18. For some examples to the early generation of parametric urban design see: Holistic City Software (2005), CityCAD, http://www.holisticcity.co.uk/, accessed in March 2012; MODELUR—A Parametric Urban Design Tool (2009), http://www.modelur.com/, accessed in May 2011; Skidmore, Owing & Merrill Llp, (n.d.) ‘Parametric Urban Design’, http://www.som.com/content.cfm/parametric_urban_design, accessed in March 2012.

19. The authors of the software define it as a ‘procedural modelling’. It means ‘3D geometries and textures are constructed using rules (procedures) instead of labour-intensive manual modelling’ (Esri, 2011).

20. Parametric shape grammar is a type computational system of generating shapes by the geometric transformation rules. See, Stiny, G. (1980) ‘Introduction to Shape and Shape Grammars’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 7(3), pp. 343 – 351.

21. Since it is compatible with geospatial data, the model is devised to be utilised in the planning of actual cities as well.

22. Jose Alfredo Ramírez, co-founder and director of Groundlab is actually the director of the Landscape Urbanism MA at the Architectural Association, London where most of the above-mentioned design researches were held.

23. After the personal conversation with S. Marshall in August 2017.

24. Hanafin et al. (2009) differentiates determinist models, which require to start design with a parametrically manipulateable but already given end-product, from the non-deterministic ones, which allow designer start with the algorithm without knowing its physical representation at the outset.

25. The design team used parametric modelling software called CATIA to simulate and optimize the 3D design composition of the competition area. By the software, the model called the ‘wool-thread’ was utilized as an optimization method for the road network to decrease the overall network length without increasing the deviation/detour factor. With the model, the lines of the streets were curved, bent and bundled through various locations.

26. Interestingly, the evaluation committee of the competition states in the jury report that the project offers a potential to make phasing and land subdivision easy in the course of implementation. see: Topbas, K., Sorkin, M., Kaptan, H., Tur, E. T., Jumsai, S., Ozkan, S., Inceoglu, N., (2006) Kartal Alt Merkez ve Kartal-Pendik Kıyı Kesmi Kentsel Dönüşüm Projesi, Değerelendirme Kurulu Raporu –Kartal- Pendik Urban Design Project Evaluation Committee Report-, Istanbul Metropolitan Planning and Urban Design Center (IMP): Istanbul.

27. With some other big urban projects, Kartal Masterplan is currently considered as one of the failed projects in Istanbul. Turkey. See: Kumbasar, C (2016) ‘Kent Boyle Dönüşüyor’—How the City is Transformed—, Cumhuriyet, 3 April 2016, p. 8.

28. The author’s argument on urban designers is in parallel to the point made by N. Leach (2014) about the emerging role of architects in the context of computational design: ‘No longer is the architect the demiurgic form-maker of the past. Rather the architect has been recast as the controller of processes, who oversees the “formation” of architecture.’ (p. 154).

29. For a concise discussion on the substantial difference between a corporate object and a collective entity, see: Marshall (2009, p. 135).

30. With regards to the emerging capabilities of parametric design in urbanism, the term positively used by P. Schumacher (2011): ‘… a new monumental synthesis is achieved that combines variegated richness with continuity and coherence: intensive coherence’ (p. 427).

31. For a thorough discussion on the lack of concern of current parametric design methods about the non operational/wicked problems, see: Konig, R. (2011) ‘Generative Planning Methods from Structuralist Perspective’ in (eds.) T. Valena, T. Avermadete, G. Vrachiliotis, Structuralism Reloaded: Rule-Based Design in Architecture and Urbanism, Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges, pp. 275 – 280.

32. As one of the most developed parametric application in urbanism, publicized so far, the designed model at the ‘Relational Urbanism’ studio at the Berlage Institute in the Netherlands in 2010, sets orientation, land us, height and traffic as the constraining factors involved in the parametric framework (Llabres & Rico, 2012).

33. Overreliance on the initially set design parameters despite the emerging variables (i.e. property pattern) that subsequently involved in the process and radically affects the design morphology.

34. To integrate parametric modelling into the collective and participatory processes of urban development and design, it is necessary to transform the current limitations—i.e. publicly inaccessible codes, difficulty to modify the model by the third-parties, inflexibility of the models to be transformed (Davis, 2013, pp. 27 – 42)—mainly directing from the specifications of the technique.