Maroš Krivý, “Parametricist Architecture, Smart Cities, and the Politics of Consensus,” Ehituskunst: Investigations in Architecture and Theory, 57 (2016), 22–45.
This paper interrogates the political ramifications of parametricism and the smart city, two recently popularised programs for architectural practice and urban planning. The former proclaims a program of unapologetically apolitical architecture that aligns design intelligence with the hegemonic interests of the elites of late capitalism and grasps the urban in terms of flows. The latter sacrifices democratic politics to computational intelligence fed by Big Data and conceives of citizens as environmentally and behaviourally governable sensing nodes. Both programs envision architects and urban planners as unbiased data operators; both delegitimate political agonism and the voice of those who fail to become smart and “easy-flowing”.
This paper interrogates the political ramifications of parametricism and the smart city, two recently popularised programs for architectural practice and urban planning. The former proclaims a program of unapologetically apolitical architecture that aligns design intelligence with the hegemonic interests of the elites of late capitalism and grasps the urban in terms of flows. The latter sacrifices democratic politics to computational intelligence fed by Big Data and conceives of citizens as environmentally and behaviourally governable sensing nodes. Both programs envision architects and urban planners as unbiased data operators; both delegitimate political agonism and the voice of those who fail to become smart and “easy-flowing”.