ABSTRACT
However, in the twenty-first century the elementarism associated with classical modern science may be returning to architectural production. The popularity of digitally based parametric design is overtaking the design arts. Parametric design, by definition, involves the reduction of a design challenge, or “problem,” into its constituent elements (Figure 52). Each element is then isolated and suboptimized or “solved,” as though designing is analogous to working through a mathematical problem. It is the second coming of twentieth-century reductionism. The making of architecture becomes a process of programming a computer model using algorithms, or scripts, developed to meet the performance specifications for suboptimizing the specific parameter under consideration. The computer model does the rest, as the architect sits back and waits for the results to spit out. Green architecture parameter lists such as LEED further promote elementarism, and thus frustrate the ability of the architect to treat the design as a whole. Team design practices also create an agenda of concern for the constituent parts, rather than a poetic and elegantly resolved whole.
