Place and Parametricism: Critical, Archival and Digital Approaches to Contemporary Design

Can qualitative ideas of place be adequately encompassed by the quantitative methods of digital and parametric design? This wide-ranging and multi-faceted book explores how designers and architects capture the deeper qualities of place though their practice. It provides a rigorous exploration of the nature of place and its role in design in parallel with a detailed analysis of the nature of parametricism.

Parametric design aims to encompass all design criteria and values relating to how a building might be experienced by using algorithmic processes and computational technology. By inputting particular parameters, all elements could be reflected in the resulting design. Drawing on ideas and approaches from diverse, disciplinary perspectives, essays in this book argue for greater attentiveness to place in contemporary design practice, and consider the potential of parametric techniques to enhance the engagement with place in design contexts. Considering place beyond the designer’s touch, chapters explore other creative disciplines such as literature, art and music, seeking commonalities across the realm of imaginative endeavour in the creation of a tangible sense of place, environment and experience. Authors also discuss notions of atmosphere and interiority, and consider the potential to extend beyond the bounded internality of architectural spaces and examine interiority through ecological systems, identity and urbanism.

The book also explores ideas of home-making through various narrative, spatial, material and digital forms and the possibilities of parametric methods. By decentring existing anthropocentric understandings of place that privilege human perspectives, authors also consider other living perspectives and how design can support more-than-human places of the future.

Mark Burry is Professor and the Founding Director of the Smart Cities Research Institute at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. He is a practising architect and has published internationally on two main themes: putting theory into practice with regard to procuring ’challenging’ architecture, and the life, work and theories of the architect Antoni Gaudí. He was Senior Architect at the Sagrada Família Basilica Foundation, Spain, from 1979 until late 2016. He is the editor of Digital Architecture (2020) and edited an edition of Architectural Design titled Urban Futures (2020).

Gini Lee is a landscape architect, interior designer and pastoralist. Her academic focus is on cultural and critical landscape architecture and spatial interior design theory and studio practice, to engage with the curation and postproduction of complex landscapes. Her recent curatorial practice experiments with Deep Mapping methods to investigate the landscapes, interiors and gardens of remote and rural Australia. She is currently Adjunct Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Adjunct Professor in Interior Design at RMIT University, Australia, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She was the Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne from 2011 to 2017.

Jeff Malpas is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tasmania, Australia. He was founder and, until 2005, Director of the university’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics. He has authored and edited numerous books with some of the world’s leading academic presses and has published a wide range of scholarly articles on topics in philosophy, art, architecture, and geography. His books include Place and Experience (2018) and Heidegger’s Topology (2006).

Stanislav Roudavski is Senior Lecturer in Digital Architectural Design at the University of Melbourne, Australia. His work explores practical and theoretical issues of more-than-human design and his research engages with philosophies of ecology, technology, design and architecture. His work has been disseminated through multiple academic publications and international exhibitions. Previously, he worked on research projects at the University of Cambridge, UK, had a teaching engagement at MIT, USA and practised architecture in several European countries.

Mark Taylor is Professor of Architecture at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. His primary research focus is the history and theory of the modern architectural interior with an emphasis on cultural and social issues. He has published several books including Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader (2006), Interior Design and Architecture: Critical and Primary Sources (Bloomsbury, 2013), Designing the French Interior: The Modern Home and Mass Media (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Flow: Interior, Landscape and Architecture in the Era of Liquid Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2018). He is co-editor of Domesticity under Siege: When Home isn’t Safe (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2022) with Georgina Downey and Terry Meade.