Don’t bother with parametric modelling if you don’t have the right people and if the project leader is not behind it. Seriously, don’t.
Parametric modelling is a lot harder than it seems. Learning it on the job will be slower than you think. You’ll end up disappointing your client, your team, and before you know it, you’ll have turned everyone around you against it, even yourself. It’s not for everyone.
If you can do it, though, you’ll open up whole new realms of possibilities. You will achieve a kind of intellectual and practical power that architects could only dream of fifty years ago, the kind Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier were aiming for but could not quite reach because they didn’t have the right tools.
Why is parametric modelling so hard?
It requires a fundamentally different way of thinking. A hundred years ago, Louis Sullivan said that form follows function. Parametric modelling takes that statement to the extreme. If you want to get parametric design wrong, design a building the usual way, and then try to add the parameters in. That won’t work. To get it right, you first must understand what the parameters are, then you must make them the heart and soul of the design. You must design the building around those parameters.
This first of all requires a committed project leader. Countless times, there will be a push to compromise and follow an artistic desire in contradiction with the parameters. If the project leader does not firmly believe in the importance of the parametric process, there will be conflict, frustration, and eventually the clever 3D model will be set aside “just for now”, later to be discarded permanently.
You also need the right team. If you want to get parametric design wrong, hire just one guy to set things up so you can tweak the parameters. Inevitably, he will become not only a bottleneck, but also a bottle-stopper, constantly rejecting the team’s ideas because they can’t adapt to the parameters. Once again, eventually, frustration will build up and the approach will be abandoned.
To get it right, the whole team should be doing it so that they all understand the restrictions and how they can contribute to the design. They also need to understand and appreciate that parametric design does not equal design by computers and boring, repetitive results. It is merely a tool, a process that can be used effectively to produce soulful architecture.
It’s not for everyone.
Parametric design is not right for everyone. Without the right project leader and the right team, it simply won’t happen.
So, if it’s so hard, why would you bother?
In a word: power; the power to reduce a design to its most fundamental elements, and to shape the resulting building to best meet the requirements even as they change; the power to quickly generate or alter complex structures that would have taken traditional teams many months to draft; the power to find that sublime zone where repetitive work is eliminated and the design of a building becomes an entirely pure intellectual endeavour.
Wouldn’t you like that power?
