In Parametricism - A New Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design (2008), Patrik Schumacher delineates a niche for specific "software studies" within design and identifies this research project as part of a broad post-fordist retooling of the profession of architecture. Schumacher states that parametric modelling and scripting are not just techniques, but indicative of a style that embraces mass customization to explore "conspicuous differentiation" and the "visual amplification of differentiating logics" through built form. One only need look as far as the practice of Greg Lynn to understand that this thinking isn't exactly new - Lynn was peering into animation and special effects software in the late 1990s and speculating how these (then) new tools would transform the design and construction process. A decade later, we find ourselves in an era of design education where pedagogy is often inextricably tied to specific software platforms, each of which contains a range of formal, organizational and proprietary filters that colour the perception of designers. Although Schumacher's text makes some evocative statements about the possibility of parametricism playing out at an urban scale, he is clearly proselytizing and goes as far as stating: "...it is impossible to compete within the contemporary avant-garde scene without mastering and advancing these techniques." This sounds more like a description of an arms race than an aesthetics or organizational logic.

A recent design studio at the GSD led by Michael Meredith (of MOS) yielded Church Machine, a fantastic critique of parametric modeling produced by Matt Storus. Meredith's studio called for students to interrogate the subjectivity of media and examine how architectural ideas are communicated through and inflected by specific mediums - the intent here was to foreground the means of production while designing a Unitarian church. In response to this challenge, Storus produced the below video that combines a layered reading of the moment-to-moment life of an application-hopping, social networking, operating-system-battling architecture student in the midst of developing his design proposal. The project offers an expansive view of contemporary architectural education and a nuanced rebuttal of parametric design while prototyping a spectacular place of worship in the process.

Storus' video is rich and it is worth watching the 16 minute piece from start to finish. I'll let the majority of it speak for itself, but I have made a few annotations below.

• 01:00 - Rhino model of site immediately gives way to Google search/map/street view—3D model as component of larger, multi-application representation of the city and design brief.
• 02:00 - Processing sketch as a rhetorical space - media theory as conditional programming.
• 03:20 - Discipline-specific bounding circles transition into a shifting interdisciplinary Venn Diagram.
• 06:18 - "When Grasshopper tells you that the parametric is really an extension of postmodernism with a positivistic, scientific overtone - click ok!"
• 08:45 - Steve Reich's Clapping Music gives way to the pulse of a mouse click/keystroke rhythm track.
• 09:46 - The proposed church is compelling - stripped bare as a diagram the operational logic of the machine/building is clear...
• 12:50 - ...and the structure delivers not only as a formal endeavour, but the manner in which the flexible roof structure manages light and sound is beautiful (and well communicated through the renderings and atmospheric sound design).
• 15:58 - The architectural blue screen of death: "A problem has been detected and your project has been shut down to prevent damage to your professional aptitude... Check to make sure any new hardware or software is not designing for you. If this is a new installation, ask yourself what else does your project look like. If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable an automatic conception of architecture as necessarily complex in formal terms. Form cannot guarantee architecture. ... Go make a physical model."

Outside of offering a critique on parametric design and software dependency, Storus has also obliquely referenced a relevant style of religious architecture. Produced in an era before the architect was recognized as the singular author of an edifice, Gothic cathedrals had their own "generative logic" where form emerged from the collaboration of church officials, (sacred) geometers, engineers, masons, muralists, sculptors and stained glass artisans over decades (generations) of collaboration. In engaging the parametric, Church Machine internalizes this legacy of piecemeal construction and re-presents it as a contemporary (and simultaneously archaic) device for modulating light and sound.