Course Description
This course explores the new frontiers of parametric, three-dimensional architectural design. World-renowned for the firm’s ability to reinterpret the canons of classic architecture, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) shares its innovative architectural vision via the voices of its leading professionals, including Principal Patrik Schumacher. Taking an in-depth look at the firm’s flagship completed and upcoming projects, the course offers valuable examples and useful analysis tools that the firm has developed during its successful professional history.
The course casts light on the architectural design and compositional innovation creative processes that have led to the construction of highly-advanced buildings. It also offers a special focus on new technologies applied during the various developmental stages of the design process: 3D viewers, immersive design in three-dimensional environments, parametric design, and so on.
The course offers scope for discussion, and is a major study opportunity for all architects keen to closely investigate the dynamics that underpin design of major contemporary architectural works.
About the Architect
Patrik Schumacher
Patrik Schumacher is Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects. Since he began his career at the firm in 1988, he has made a key contribution to the firm’s development into the global architecture and design brand that it is today. The German-born architect
studied philosophy, mathematics and architecture in Bonn, Stuttgart and London. He graduated in architecture in 1990, and is a Professor at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. In 1996, he founded the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association
in London, where he continues to teach. In 1999, he completed his PhD at the University of Klagenfurt Institute for Cultural Science. He has been a partner and co-designer of all Zaha Hadid Architects projects since 2003. In 2010, he and Zaha Hadid won
the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture for their work on MAXXI, the Italian National Museum of 21st-Century Art and Architecture in Rome. Patrik Schumacher currently lectures around the world. He recently
held the John Portman Chair of Architecture at GSD Harvard. Over the last 20 years, he has published more than 100 articles in architecture magazines and anthologies. In 2008, he coined the word “parametricism”, and has since published a series of posters
promoting this discipline as the new style for the 21st Century. In 2010/2012, he published his architectural theory in two volumes, under the title “The Autopoiesis of Architecture”. Patrik Schumacher is widely acknowledged to be a leading thinker in
the fields of architecture, urban planning and design. Cyberspace and the Autopoiesis of Architecture In the near future, cyberspace is where all architectural actions and innovation will unfold. Any choice made within this space involves all three of
the distinct parts of a project as defined in Patrik Schumacher’s architectural theory: the organizational project, the phenomenological project, and the semiological project, of which the last is the key element. Since all urban spaces are never merely
simple physical containers that transport and channel bodies/objects because they are also always spaces for travel and interaction, an information-rich communicative character becomes the very essence of all cyberspace. Whether real or virtual, designing
architectural works implies the development of a spatial/visual language to enhance communicative capacity, making it possible to create environments rich in readable information that promote new forms of social interaction at all levels.
