ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on creating a complex component system that is derived from seemingly simple parts and a set of logics in a bottom-up manner. However, each component of the assembly will have slightly different parameters from its neighbor. Visual communication is an important part of generating and evaluating a parametric system. To continue using biological metaphors, the former principals of Foreign Office Architects once organized their projects in a phylogram according to geometric and operational classifications. The first exercise set focuses on creating a parametric system from a simple form. Mark Burry uses a biological metaphor the genotype and phenotype as a way to describe parametric systems. Changing the parameters within a genotype results in different phenotypes. The value of parametric systems in the design process is this robust capacity to generate variable outputs suited to unique inputs, all from the same system.
