There is a building going up in Dubai that looks remarkably like a building going up in Shenzhen, which looks remarkably like a building completed last year in Warsaw. The convergence is not accidental.
The globalisation of architectural software — Rhino, Grasshopper, and the render engines that turn designs into photorealistic images for client presentations — has produced a shared formal vocabulary that crosses cultures and climates with equal indifference to both.
The irony is that parametric design, sold as a tool for generating infinite formal variety, has instead narrowed the visual range of contemporary architecture. When every firm uses the same tools and responds to the same client expectations, the outputs converge.