Rowan Moore on Patrick Schumacher

Rowan Moore on Patrick Schumacher

Rowan Moore is an Architecture Critic for the Observer Newspaper, in September 2016 he published an article on Patrick Schumacher, director of Zaha Hadid Architects and alumni of London South Bank University.

In the article Rowan Schumacher is portrayed as an Architect who is Pro Capitalism, and a Brexit supporter who loves the idea of escaping the “paralysing embrace of the EU’s interventionist regulatory overreach”. Schumacher is also portrayed as unapologetic for working for various Dictators, attacking a list of “moralising critics” of whom Rowan Moore considers himself to be one of.

In the article Moore gives some background to Schumacher, born in 1961 Schumacher started working with Zaha Hadid in 1988, and rose to become her “right hand man” continuing working with her up until her death earlier this year. Now Schumacher has taken control of the 400-strong practice and continues as the lead figure in their design across the world.

Schumacher is a strong believer in Parametricism, best described as “a way of designing buildings in such a way that every element can change in response to the multiple parameters – the way people might move through it, for example, the frequency of encounter, their dwell times – to which it is subjected. It exploits the ability of computers both to process complex information and to conceive complex architectural shapes”.

This idea that you feed every single piece of data imaginable into a computer to process your building is a divisive notion, as opposed to the intuitive judgements upon which architecture usually relies upon. Schumacher sees Parametricism as architectural style of capitalism, who believes in free enterprise as the best means to the “human development of prosperity and freedom”.