{"id":8206,"date":"2026-05-11T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/?p=8206"},"modified":"2026-05-15T15:19:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:19:06","slug":"the-relationship-between-architecture-and-capitalism-on-which-parametricism-was-premised-ceased-to-exist-long-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angesfinanciers.org\/index.php\/2026\/05\/11\/the-relationship-between-architecture-and-capitalism-on-which-parametricism-was-premised-ceased-to-exist-long-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"“The relationship between architecture and capitalism on which parametricism was premised ceased to exist long ago”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dongdaemun<\/div>\n

Parametricism<\/a> can never become a dominant architecture style now that the forces of capitalism are no longer interested in the lives of the masses, writes Douglas Spencer<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Parametricism was to be “the great new style after modernism”.<\/strong> Patrik Schumacher had announced it as such in 2008, in his Parametricist Manifesto<\/a>, presented at that year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.<\/p>\n

Postmodernism<\/a> and deconstructivism<\/a>, he declared, had been mere transitional episodes in the history of the avant-garde. Pitstops on the road to parametricism, whose arrival marked a “new, long wave of research and innovation”.<\/p>\n

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The fault in Schumacher’s manifesto is that it doesn’t do full justice to the significance of his own argument<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From the vantage point of the present, it might be tempting to be equally dismissive of parametricism. Less a long wave, more a brief burst of misplaced enthusiasm. But the fault in Schumacher’s manifesto \u2013 however improbably \u2013 is that it doesn’t do full justice to the significance of his own argument.<\/p>\n

By positioning parametricism within the avant-garde, Schumacher situates it within a lineage where formal experimentation is understood and valued as an end in itself. But his manifesto actually makes an about-turn from the idea of architectural autonomy, breaking ranks with the practices with which he is seeking affiliation.<\/p>\n

The archetypal figures of the avant-garde, like Peter Eisenman<\/a>, Rem Koolhaas<\/a>, or even Schumacher’s partner in practice, Zaha Hadid<\/a>, might conjure up novelties by toying with architecture’s formal repertoire, or ransacking its history for inspiration, but Schumacher takes his bearings from outside the discipline. He legitimises parametricism in relation to contemporary conditions of capitalist development, arguing the relevance of the style with reference to the social and economic ends to which it can be turned. Schumacher, in this sense at least, is in fact a late modernist<\/a>.<\/p>\n