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Parametric modelling is the integration of programming techniques into the design process. This means both, the use of specific software and the evolution of new concepts. With parametric modelling the design team can manage highly complex design tasks with high precision, generate design variations in real time, review the project with extraordinary flexibility and speed, and directly trigger the industrial production routines towards custom manufacturing. This implies that former boundaries between the technical and the creative realm lose their meaning. Software like the plug-in Grasshopper for the CAD software Rhinoceros has speeded up this evolution (Grasshopper 2013).

To stress the full potential of the approach, we take a closer look and specify the expression parametric modelling by the three terms parametric, associative and generative. Strictly speaking, the term parametric only means that design decisions are transferred into changeable values, the parameters. This is fundamental and already covered by any object-oriented architectural design software (CAAD). What parametric wants to emphasise here, is: The designer can determine the way parameters are defined and how the parameter-driven components are connected and affect each other. This functionality is more precisely referred to by the term associative and reflects that virtual models, created with this premise, can easily adapt to changing constraints. The advantage of wisely structured associative models is that they can be manipulated by only a few parameters but are still highly flexible. The third term in connection with parametric modelling is generative design. This concept goes even a step further and implies emergence and simulation (Bonacker et al. 2009, p. 463; cf. Johnson 2001). Emergence means that the result of a parametric modelled structure cannot be predicted exactly by reviewing the elements of the program. This is typical for agent-based systems (swarm behaviour) and recursive programs (Fig. 1). Simulation refers to software models of physical phenomena. Dynamic relaxation for example can yield in forms, which are rather defined in a meta-level than by direct input. In summary, parametric modelling is not only modelling the pursued design but also the design process itself. The designer now is able to control the design as a whole and to any detail desired at any stage of the development. The elaboration of the parametric model is part of the progress.

Fig. 14 Models from the first semester of Bridging the Gap.

Fig. 1 Parameter controlled fractal branching structure without any random script components (DL 2006).

It is not an easy task to make architecture students become acquainted with the concepts and techniques of parametric modelling. One reason is the harsh beginning and a relative long phase, before the approach plays off its full potential (Fig. 2). Sufficient motivation can only be achieved by projects not too large for beginners but already too complex to be managed by traditional means. Thus, several courses previous to Bridging the Gap focussed on digital production (Fig. 3, left) or geometrically challenging tasks (Fig. 3, right).

Fig. 2 Diagram according to Neil Katz, SOM, as seen at the Design Modelling Symposium Berlin 2011.

Fig. 3 Left: non-rationalized surface model from a laser-cutter in a file-to-factory manner (Silke Maret, TU Dresden, 2009). Right: pre-rationalized surface discretized by interlocking elements (Robin Bongers, TU Dresden, 2010).