Geographically and Critically Informed Architecture versus Kaleidoscopic Parametric ism Andrzej Piotrowski, University of Minnesota, USA Abstract: Designers of territorial projects or urban interventions have been inspired by new geographical research, especially by the possibility of mapping and critically engaging with the most fluid aspects of postmodem reality. Yet other designers, especially those using pa!Wnetric techniques, are primarily interested in aesthetic effects, dismissing the site-specific aspects of cultural, social, economic, or political issues. This paper argues that such a shift from critical to non-critical attitudes in architecture is motivated by a subconscious desire to provide mental comfort to people unsettled by the dynamically changing world It claims that contemporary parametric forms, much like earlier kaleidoscopic compositions in Victorian England, substitute self-referential effects for an awareness of the actual complexity of the world in which we live. Thus it is necessary to distinguish between design practices that promote mental denial and those that critically inform conceptual processes. Keywords: Architecture, Urbanism, Geography, Parametric Design Introduction R ecently two trends have competed for the future of the architectural profession: one in which architects are conceptually exploring important changes in contemporary life, another in which others have used design to make those same issues inaccessible and seemingly irrelevant. Although both trends claim to have responded to contemporary problems and may appear similar because they rely on new digital techniques of information management, their effect, this article argues, is ultimately quite different. The first of these trends can be broadly identified with what David Gissen calls architecture 's geographic tum, 1 which in its most productive version has expanded upon many of the insights and methods of other scholarly fields, especially those involving critical theories and addressing the spatial diversity of postmodern and global phenomena. When, for example, inspired by the new subfields within geography, this approach has been conceptually innovative because it has focused scholarly and professional attention of designers on larger cultural, social and economic shifts and the interdependence of various social and material systems, which in turn helped to redefine the architect's role and transformed the formulaic traditions of urban planning into a more dynamic notion of territorial projects. The second trend in contemporary architecture, which I here term the kaleidoscopic turn, involves the use of parametric design techniques. It is best illustrated by its extreme which, I assert, the new information management tools and digital techniques create only an impression of dealing with substantive issues. Instead, they create empty forms that, like the kaleidoscope, produce a kind of visual pleasure that silences the need to understand uncomfortable aspects of our reality. The use of parametric design techniques in an urban project reveals here that what has been viewed as a backlash against critical theories in the design fields has been not intellectual but way of using certain kinds of compositions to deflect critical attention away from complex cultural, social or economic issues. The differences in the assumptions and objectives of these two trends thereby imply different futures for the profession of architecture and for the world's cities. 1 David Gissen, "Architecture's Geographic Turns," Log 12 2008): 59-67. Spaces and Flows: An International Journal of Urban and ExtraUrban Studies Volume 4, 2014, www.spacesandflows.com, ISSN 2154-8676 ©Common Ground, Andrzej Piotrowski, All Rights Reserved Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com COMMON GROUND