“I would argue that there is none. There are a number of emerging areas such as parametrics and phylogenetic architecture, but nothing is so widespread as to constitute a ‘paradigm’. The role of the computer in design has become quite significant and it is providing a new world of forms, but again, I do not see that these coalesce into anything that can be seen as a single, shared or major paradigm. I think we are very much in the grips of an individualist mentality that focuses on personal interpretation of problems, sites and programs. Although this is in the name of place, context or localism, it has not yielded anything coherent, shared or connective. This pluralism may be championed but I would suggest it has gotten to the point that architects are each speaking such an individual language that communication has become impossible. Without that there is no basis for debate. Perhaps the ‘latest’ paradigm, is not so late, i.e., recent, but nothing more than postmodern free-for-all relativism. In this context any (new) paradigm is nothing more than someone’s (and yet another) individual take on something.”
Luis Diaz, on the latest paradigm in architecture today.
