Search
|

Patrik Schumacher

An architect and a theorist, he developed the concept of “parametricism”. He started working with Zaha Hadid in 1988 and is now director of Zaha Hadid Architects. He founded the Design Research Laboratory at the AA School of Architecture in London and taught at Columbia University and at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Currently he is tenured Professor at Innsbruck University.   Zaha Hadid Architects Patrik Schumacher

Article

The new architecture of organizations

Patrik Schumacher

Article

The new architecture of organizations

How does the transition from the industrial capitalism to the capitalism of knowledge affect the modes of organization? Resulting from industrialization, the pyramidal and rigid Fordist model collapsed in the late 1970s. Today, companies and management theories explore fluid and nonlinear modes of organization, as economic activity now relates to research and artistic creation process. Management consulting and avant-garde architecture share the same conceptual tools and lexicons, helping to re-establish the architectural discipline and rehabilitate it as an actor of social progress. Instead of trying to avoid commercial pressure and identifying it as inappropriate for architecture, Schumacher invites us to consider commercial success as an indicator of progress. Patrik Schumacher
 is an architect and a theorist. He is the director of Zaha Hadid Architects and teaches at Innsbruck University.

Discover

Related Contents

Article

Training Citizen Architects to Serve a Community

Andrew Freear

Article

Training Citizen Architects to Serve a Community

Designing an inclusive city implies involving their residents in urban projects, but what is the role of architects and urban planners in this process? For Andrew Freear, the head of the Rural Studio program, they both have the ethical responsibility of getting locally involved via concrete projects. Architectural schools must thus take on training citizen architects by engaging them in learning by doing, and thus have them redevelop a deep connection with context and places, acting as neighbors and activists within communities in order to collectively carry out experimental projects that tangibly improve society and the environment.

Discover
Vidéo

Collaborating with situations

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

Vidéo

Collaborating with situations

The two Lebanese artists and filmmakers were awarded the 2017 Marcel Duchamp Award for Unconformities, a project currently on display at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. This artwork, like their approach, is based on a methodology of investigation and excavation and aims to offer another reading of history and the traces of the past.

Discover
Article

Design: Reparation

Nicolas Nova

Article

Design: Reparation

Nicolas Nova is a social anthropologist. Inspired by New Media Studies and design fiction, he contends that the future of design lies in recycling and reparation as well as reinventing forms and functions. Did you know that a used flip-flop could serve as a lighter?

Discover
Article

From "Mediance" to Places

Augustin Berque

Article

From "Mediance" to Places

The geographer and orientalist Augustin Berque revisits the polysemic dimension of the term “milieu,” and explains the distinction made by mesology—“the area of biology that deals with the relationships between the environments and organisms”—between “environment” and “milieu.” The reality of things differs depending on the environment of each species or culture, the object doesn’t exist in itself but according to its relationship with the subject. In this way, mesology goes much further than the subject/object dualism of modern science. Ontologically “trajective,” the environment is neither objective nor subjective, but firmly between the two theoretical subject/object centers. Berque takes the term “mediance,” meaning the dynamic coupling of the individual and their surroundings, from the Japanese “fūdo,” to which he adds “trajection,” a process that results in the “mediance” of human existence in its concrete surroundings. Taken as a whole, all human environments, distinct from the biosphere through their eco-techno-symbolic dimension, form the ecumene. For architecture, this implies a respect for history and the environment, without mimicking ancient forms, creating from the “mediance” of each place.

Discover
Vidéo

An Attempt to Drain Places

Larissa Fassler

Vidéo

An Attempt to Drain Places

Larissa Fassler is a “Neo-Situationist” artist. By exploring places over the course of many hours, she gleans their ephemeral essence, which she then superimposes on the fixed urban master plan. The subjective maps thus generated highlight both urban narratives and history.

Discover
Vidéo

Maximizing reuse, minimizing transformation

Armand Bernoud

Vidéo

Maximizing reuse, minimizing transformation

Maximum is a design studio that maximizes the value of waste; its material, its form and its engineering. Some materials are transformed in a semi-industrial process while others give birth to unique pieces, such as the glass walls of the Centre Pompidou caterpillar.

Discover

Explore More

Eager to share more generously the results of its collaborations and research, PCA-STREAM publishes STREAM VOICES, its online magazine!

Discover Stream Voices