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Zaha Hadid's Patrik Schumacher & Market Urbanism's Adam Hengels - Startup Cities



We are happy to welcome Patrik Schumacher, Principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, and Adam Hengels, Founder of Market Urbanism & Parafin, to the next installation of the Startup Cities event series. They will discuss their perspectives on "Market Urbanism", the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). The event format will be a fireside chat and networking session. Drinks and food provided.



Patrik Schumacher is principal of Zaha Hadid Architects and is leading the firm since Zaha Hadid’s passing in March 2016. He joined Zaha Hadid in 1988 and was seminal in developing Zaha Hadid Architects to become a 400 strong global architecture and design brand. Patrik Schumacher studied philosophy, mathematics and architecture in Bonn, Stuttgart and London. He received his Diploma in architecture in 1990.  He has been a partner since 2003 and a co-author on all projects. In 2010 Patrik Schumacher won the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture together with Zaha Hadid, for MAXXI, the National Italian Museum for Art and Architecture of the 21st century in Rome. He is an academician of the Berlin Academy of Arts. In 1996 he founded the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association in London where he continues to teach. In 1999 he completed his PHD at the Institute for Cultural Science, Klagenfurt University. Patrik Schumacher is lecturing worldwide and recently held the John Portman Chair in Architecture at Harvard’s GSD. Over the last 20 years he has contributed over 100 articles to architectural journals and anthologies. In 2008 he coined the phrase Parametricism and has since published a series of manifestos promoting Parametricism as the new epochal style for the 21st century. In 2010/2012 he published his two-volume theoretical opus magnum “The Autopoiesis of Architecture”. Patrik Schumacher is widely recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders within the fields of architecture, urbanism and design.


In, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Volume 2, A New Agenda for Architecture, Patrik Schumacher proposes a new agenda for contemporary architecture in response to the challenges and opportunities posed by current societal and technological developments. The Volume ends with a manifesto for the new style of Parametricism, promoted as candidate to become the unified, epochal style for the 21st century. It is nothing other than the rational reconstruction and systematization of the discursively evolving discipline, made explicit as unified theory and opened up to criticism and constructive elaboration.


Adam Hengels is Founder of The Center for Market Urbanism and co-founder of Parafin. Adam is passionate about economics and cities.  The ideas at marketurbanism.com have been instrumental in demonstrating the urgency of liberalizing land use policy to make cities more vibrant, inclusive, and affordable.  In the face of an urban housing supply crisis, thinkers across the political spectrum have come to accept the Market Urbanist case for liberalization made over the past decade.  Through The Center for Market Urbanism non-profit and his entrepreneurial endeavors, Adam’s mission is to improve the urban experience, and overcome obstacles that prevent aspiring city dwellers from enjoying the way-of-life they desire. Adam Hengels is the co-founder of Parafin, a proprietary Artificial Intelligence software.  Parafin designs like an architect and thinks like a developer to generate optimized building designs in minutes. He was SVP and Director of Development of PAD and H.ME, real estate development start-ups focused on communities for young professionals.  From Mega-Projects to Micro-Apartments, Adam has brought his development expertise to several high-profile projects including the $5B Barclays Center Arena and Atlantic Yards project (now branded Pacific Park) in Brooklyn, New York.  Adam earned his Masters in Real Estate Development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has a BS and MS in Structural Engineering.


Watch the demo of Parafin, co-founded by Adam Hengels, which is a proprietary Artificial Intelligence that designs like an architect and thinks like a developer to generate optimized building designs in minutes, not months. Parafin is specifically created for real estate developers engaged in the acquisition and development of commercial real estate projects. Parafin's artificial intelligence generates thousands of building designs to optimize for the specific site, construction and financial requirements of your project. Test fit any site, on any device, anywhere in real time.


The Startup Cities event series' mission is to create a nexus of information and action. That nexus includes research produced by academics, technology envisioned by entrepreneurs, and support funded by both private and public investors. Each event hopes to champion the ideas making cities more dynamic.

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