Tectonism: Architecture for the Twenty-First Century

In a 2009 issue of Architectural Digest (vol. 79, no. 4), Patrik Schumacher grandly announced “the enunciation of a new style: Parametricism.” His article, Parametricism: A New Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design, even argued that this new architectural style was the successor to the Modernist movement: “Parametricism is the great new style after modernism.”

Schumacher’s book Tectonism: Architecture for the Twenty-First Century, published last year, introduces another new ‘ism’—tectonism—which is apparently a revised version of parametricism: “tectonism is classified here as a subsidiary style within the the overarching epochal style of parametricism. Tectonism is a logical continuation and refinement of earlier stages of parametricism, such as foldism, blobism, and swarmism.”

It’s hard to take Schumacher and his self-proclaimed epochal movements seriously. He makes sweeping, grandiose claims—“Tectonism is the most advanced and most sophisticated contemporary architectural style”—that have no real foundation, and he believes that parametricism/tectonism should become a global architectural hegemony: “The plurality of styles must make way for a sweeping parametricism”.