Parametricism has been billed by its originator as the defining architecture style of the 21st century. To kick off a new Dezeen series on the controversial and famously complex theory, Owen Hopkins provides an overview. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called architecture "frozen music". Although the German polymath was apparently referring to the Baroque – both in built and symphonic form – with its sweeping rhythms and harmonies, drama and emotion, it's an analogy that has haunted architecture ever since. At its root is a decidedly 19th-century view of architecture as a set of styles to be deployed according to certain aesthetic principles – and today it's red meat to traditionalists and the "beauty" brigade.…