3. Patrik Schumacher on Parametricism
3.1 “MAXXI was described as a building for the staging of art, and while provocative on many levels, this project demonstrated a maturity and calmness that belied the complexities of its form and organisation. […] This was a mature piece of architecture, a distillation of years of experimentation, only a fraction of which has been built. It is the quintessence of Zaha’s constant attempt to create a landscape, a series of cavernous spaces drawn with a free, roving line. The resulting piece gives the visitor a sense of exploration.”. With these words the jury of RIBA Stirling Price commented on the winning distinction of MAXXI win as the ‘Building of the Year 2010’. The design of MAXXI started about 12 years ago as a theoretical project; it was understood, by the Zaha Hadid Architects, from the beginning as a radical experiment in design research. Its completion, 10 years after the design competition, proved that the transformation of a radical concept into a project, a project into a building, and a building into a living institution. Even after its completion as a building MAXXI remains a theoretical project in the sense that it is an architectural manifesto projecting the potential of the new architectural style: Parametricism.10 Parametricism is the new architectural style which Patrik Schumacher, collaborate and right-hand of Zaha Hadid Architects, proposed in the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice, in 2008. During the last fifteen years he has published numerous articles theorizing a new agenda for architecture. In his latest attempts of expressing a new unified theory of architecture of the new style called by himself “Parametricism”, he 10 Patrik Schumacher, “The Meaning of MAXXI – Concepts, Ambitions, Achievements”, MAXXI: Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rizzoli International Publications, New York 2010
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