Newly Released: FLUX — Architecture in a Parametric Landscape

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Authors: Ila Berman + Andrew Kudless
Fall 2024
Applied Research + Design Publishing

FLUX: Architecture in a Parametric Landscape focuses on the radical evolution of computational and material technologies that, during the last 25 years, have catalyzed one of the most creative and prolific periods in architecture since the early 20th century. 

The book is organized into eight taxonomies— Stacked Aggregates, Modular Assemblages, Pixelated Fields, Cellular Clusters, Serial Iterations, Woven Meshes, Emerging Surfaces and Catenary Systems, and Multi-agent Systems—each of which explores a dominant logic and set of morphological traits transformed through advanced computational and material practices. These themes are theoretically explored and elaborated through the presentation of 140 built works and experimental architectural projects, which are then expanded through analytical and generative diagrams and models that further the design potential of the logics used to create them. 

Within the book, the architectures presented are considered as a population of objects responsible for the evolution of something that far exceeds the trajectory of a single project. They are thus explored less as autonomous works than as a collection of interrelated and interacting cultural artifacts in flux, whose formation, methods, and tools, as well as their experience, perception, and meaning are necessarily tied to a broader field of cultural production, contributing to the dynamic generation of new architectural and urban models. 

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Co-authored by Ila Berman and Andrew Kudless, the book unpacks how and why our current models of space are more continuous, variant and complex as a result of the tools we are using to produce them. The authors detail the ever-expanding capacities of digital computation and related fabrication technologies as these intersect with theoretical trajectories that long ago dismantled the social, functional and technological truths of the early part of the 20th century. 

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Authors

Ila Berman is the former Dean, Elwood R. Quesada Professor and Director of the Next Cities Institute at the University of Virginia and Principal of Scaleshift design. She is an architect, theorist, and curator of architecture and urbanism whose research investigates the relationship between culture and the evolution of contemporary material, technological and spatial practices.

Andrew Kudless is the founder of the design firm Matsys and the Kendall Memorial Professor and Director of the Advanced Media Technology Lab at UH Hines College of Architecture and Design. His work investigates the emergent and integral relationships between form, growth, and behavior in material systems 
 

Select Projects Featured include —

I've Heard About New Territories: R&Sie(n)

La Voute de LeFevre: Matter Design

Taichung Theater: Toyo Ito and ARUP

Aqua Tower: Studio Gang

2011 ICD/ITKE Pavilion: ICD/ITKE University of Stuttgart

Voussoir Cloud: IwamotoScott

Royal Academy of Arts: Gilles Retsin

Sean Collier Memorial MIT: Höweler+Yoon

Lafayette 148 Global Headquarters: Tsz Yan Ng and Mehrdad Hadighi of Studio for Architecture

Confluence Park Pavilion: Matsys and Lake/Flato+