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Description

Can qualitative ideas of place be adequately encompassed by the quantitative methods of digital and parametric design? This wide-ranging and multi-faceted book explores how designers and architects capture the deeper qualities of place though their practice. It provides a rigorous exploration of the nature of place and its role in design in parallel with a detailed analysis of the nature of parametricism.

Parametric design aims to encompass all design criteria and values relating to how a building might be experienced by using algorithmic processes and computational technology. By inputting particular parameters, all elements could be reflected in the resulting design. Drawing on ideas and approaches from diverse, disciplinary perspectives, essays in this book argue for greater attentiveness to place in contemporary design practice, and consider the potential of parametric techniques to enhance the engagement with place in design contexts. Considering place beyond the designer's touch, chapters explore other creative disciplines such as literature, art and music, seeking commonalities across the realm of imaginative endeavour in the creation of a tangible sense of place, environment and experience. Authors also discuss notions of atmosphere and interiority, and consider the potential to extend beyond the bounded internality of architectural spaces and examine interiority through ecological systems, identity and urbanism.

The book also explores ideas of home-making through various narrative, spatial, material and digital forms and the possibilities of parametric methods. By decentring existing anthropocentric understandings of place that privilege human perspectives, authors also consider other living perspectives and how design can support more-than-human places of the future.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface

Foreword, Patrik Schumacher
Introduction
Mark Burry, Jeff Malpas, Gini Lee, Stanislav Roudavski, Mark Taylor

Section I: The Place of the Parametric: Philosophical and Critical Perspectives
Section Introduction, Jeff Malpas
1. Parameter, Place, and Limit, Jeff Malpas
2. Bounding the Parametric – Modesty, Limit, and Repair, Megan Baynes
3. Against Parametric Reductionism in Design, Alberto Perez Gomez
4. Place as the Core of the Sacred, Elizabeth Farrelly
5. Digital Delusions: Fear and Loathing of the Parametric Utopia, Adrian Carter
6. High-Computation Design in the Return to Place, Randall Lindstrom

Section II: Place and Creativity – Facing the blank sheet
Section Introduction, Mark Burry
7. Chasing the Elusive Parti Pris, Mark Burry
8. Empathetic Understanding as the Starting Point for Design, Nicholas Ray
9. Defacing the Blank Place, Imogen Lesser Woods
10. Confronting the Blank Sheet and Making a Place, Neil Spiller
11. Diffusive Forms: Against Plato, Phillip Beesley

Section III: Place and Interiority – Atmosphere, Feeling and Spatial Presence
Section Introduction, Mark Taylor and Gini Lee
12. Storied Atmospheres: Place in Writing and Building, Mark Taylor
13. It Starts with a Kiss: Reading and Interpretation as an Impetus for Adaptive Reuse, Sally Stone
14. Mapping Interiority in the Public Realm, Paramita Atmodiwirjo and Yandi Andri Yatmo
15. Beyond Parametric Limits in Victoria's Western Grasslands: Repair and Re-storying the Atmospherics of Place, Emily Potter

Section IV: Homeplace – On the Nature of Ephemeral Traces
Section Introduction, Gini Lee
16. Three Travels in Homeplace, Gini Lee
17. The Para-meters of Placing in (an)Archive Home, Stephen Loo
18. The Parametrics of Tasmanian Gothic: How Do We Tell Ourselves That We're at Home? Ed Hollis
19. Shift(in)g Parameters, Suzie Attiwill

Section V: More-than-Human Place – Design and Management of Future Environments
Section Introduction, Stanislav Roudavski
20. Future Places, Stanislav Roudavski
21. Reciprocity in Co-created Places – A Closer Look at Human Contributions to Nature, Amy K. Hahs
22. More-than-Human Futures: Wild by Design? Wendy Steele
23. Nature Does Not 'Design'; It Responds, Freya Mathews

Index

Product details

Published 25 Dec 2025
Format Ebook (PDF)
Edition 1st
Extent 344
ISBN 9781350329997
Imprint Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Illustrations 56 bw illus
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Mark Burry

Mark Burry is Professor and the Founding Director…

Anthology Editor

Gini Lee

Gini Lee is a landscape architect, interior design…

Anthology Editor

Jeff Malpas

Jeff Malpas is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of…

Anthology Editor

Stanislav Roudavski

Stanislav Roudavski is Senior Lecturer in Digital…

Anthology Editor

Mark Taylor

Mark Taylor was Professor of Architecture at Swinb…

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