Blobitecture
Encyclopedia
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
in which buildings have an organic, amoeba
Amoeba
Amoeba is a genus of Protozoa.History=The amoeba was first discovered by August Johann Rösel von Rosenhof in 1757. Early naturalists referred to Amoeba as the Proteus animalcule after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his shape...
-shaped, bulging form. Though the term 'blob architecture' was in vogue already in the mid-1990s, the word blobitecture first appeared in print in 2002, in William Safire
William Safire
William Lewis Safire was an American author, columnist, journalist and presidential speechwriter....
's "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine in an article entitled Defenestration. Though intended in the article to have a derogatory meaning, the word stuck and is often used to describe buildings with curved and rounded shapes.
Origins of the term "blob architecture"
The term 'blob architecture' was coined by architect Greg LynnGreg Lynn
Greg Lynn is owner of the Greg Lynn FORM office, an o. Univ. Professor of architecture at University of Applied Arts Vienna, a studio professor at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and the Davenport Visiting Professor at the Yale School of Architecture. He was the winner of the Golden...
in 1995 in his experiments in digital design with metaball graphical software. Soon a range of architects and furniture designers began to experiment with this "blobby" software to create new and unusual forms. Despite its seeming organicism, blob architecture is unthinkable without this and other similar computer-aided design
Computer-aided design
Computer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...
programs. Architects derive the forms by manipulating the algorithms of the computer modeling platform. Some other computer aided design functions involved in developing this are the nonuniform rational B-spline
Nonuniform rational B-spline
Non-uniform rational basis spline is a mathematical model commonly used in computer graphics for generating and representing curves and surfaces which offers great flexibility and precision for handling both analytic and freeform shapes.- History :Development of NURBS began in the 1950s by...
or NURB, freeform surfaces, and the digitizing of sculpted forms by means akin to computed tomography
Computed tomography
X-ray computed tomography or Computer tomography , is a medical imaging method employing tomography created by computer processing...
.
Precedents
Archigram
Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s - based at the Architectural Association, London - that was futurist, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects...
, a group of English architects working in the 1960s, to which Peter Cook belonged. They were interested in inflatable architecture as well as in the shapes that could be generated from plastic. Ron Herron
Ron Herron
Ron Heron was a notable English architect and teacher. He was perhaps best known for his work with the seminal English experimental architecture collective Archigram, which was formed in London in the early 1960s...
, also a member of Archigram
Archigram
Archigram was an avant-garde architectural group formed in the 1960s - based at the Architectural Association, London - that was futurist, anti-heroic and pro-consumerist, drawing inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that was solely expressed through hypothetical projects...
, created blob-like architecture in his projects from the 1960s, such as Walking Cities
Walking city
The Walking City was an idea proposed by British architect Ron Herron in 1964. In an article in avant-garde architecture journal Archigram, Ron Herron proposed building massive mobile robotic structures, with their own intelligence, that could freely roam the world, moving to wherever their...
and Instant City, as did Michael Webb with Sin Centre. Buckminster Fuller's
Buckminster Fuller
Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....
work with geodesic dome
Geodesic dome
A geodesic dome is a spherical or partial-spherical shell structure or lattice shell based on a network of great circles on the surface of a sphere. The geodesics intersect to form triangular elements that have local triangular rigidity and also distribute the stress across the structure. When...
s provided both stylistic and structural precedents. Geodesic domes form the building blocks for works including The Eden Project
Eden Project
The Eden Project is a visitor attraction in Cornwall in the United Kingdom, including the world's largest greenhouse. Inside the artificial biomes are plants that are collected from all around the world....
. Niemeyer's
Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho is a Brazilian architect specializing in international modern architecture...
Edificio Copan
Edifício Copan
The Edifício Copan is a 140-metre, 38-story residential building in São Paulo, Brazil. Construction began in 1957 and, following some interruptions, was completed in 1966...
built in 1957 undulates nonsymetrically invoking the irregular non-linearity often seen in blobitecture. There was a climate of experimental architecture with an air of psychedelia in the 1970s that these were a part of. Frederick Kiesler's unbuilt, Endless House is another instance of early blob-like architecture, although it is symmetrical in plan and designed before computers; his design for the Shrine of the Book
Shrine of the Book
The Shrine of the Book , a wing of the Israel Museum near Givat Ram in Jerusalem, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls—discovered 1947–56 in 11 caves in and around the Wadi Qumran...
(construction begun, 1965) which has the characteristic droplet form of fluid also anticipates forms that interest architects today.
Also to be considered, if one views blob architecture from the question of form rather than technology, are the organic designs of Antoni Gaudi
Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was a Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.Much of Gaudí's work was...
in Barcelona and of the Expressionists
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
like Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut
Bruno Julius Florian Taut , was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active during the Weimar period....
and Hermann Finsterlin
Hermann Finsterlin
Hermann Finsterlin was a visionary architect, painter, poet, essayist, toymaker and composer. He played an influential role in the German expressionist architecture movement of the early 20th century but due to the harsh economic climate realised none of his projects...
.
Built examples
Despite the narrow interpretation of Blob architecture (i.e. that coming from the computer), the word, especially in popular parlance, has come to be associated quite widely with a range of curved or odd-looking buildings including Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial, and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain. It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The...
(1997) and the Experience Music Project
Experience Music Project
The EMP Museum is a museum dedicated to the history and exploration of both popular music and science fiction located in Seattle, Washington...
(2000), though these, in the narrower sense are not blob buildings, even though they were designed by advanced computer-aided design tools, CATIA
CATIA
CATIA is a multi-platform CAD/CAM/CAE commercial software suite developed by the French company Dassault Systemes...
in particular. The reason for this is that they were designed from physical models rather than from computer manipulations. The first full blob building, however, was built in the Netherlands by Lars Spuybroek
Lars Spuybroek
Lars Spuybroek is a Dutch architect and artist.-Education:He graduated cum laude at the Technical University Delft in 1989. A year later, he won the Archiprix for his Palazzo Pensile, a new royal palace for Queen Beatrix in Rotterdam...
(NOX) and Kas Oosterhuis
Kas Oosterhuis
Kas Oosterhuis is professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, as well as director of Hyperbody and the Protospace Laboratory for Collaborative Design and Engineering...
. Called the Water Pavilion (1993–1997), it has a fully computer-based shape manufactured with computer-aided tools and an electronic interactive interior where sound and light can be transformed by the visitor.
A building that also can be considered an example of a blob is Peter Cook
Peter Cook (architect)
Professor Sir Peter Cook, founder of Archigram , former Director the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, has been a pivotal figure within the global architectural world for over half a century. His ongoing contribution to...
and Colin Fournier
Colin Fournier
Colin Fournier is co-architect with Peter Cook of the Kunsthaus Graz in Austria. He is also professor of The Bartlett School of Architecture, a part of University College London.-References:...
's Kunsthaus
Kunsthaus Graz
The Kunsthaus Graz, Grazer Kunsthaus, or Graz Art Museum was built as part of the European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2003 and has since become an architectural landmark in Graz, Austria...
(2003) in Graz
Graz
The more recent population figures do not give the whole picture as only people with principal residence status are counted and people with secondary residence status are not. Most of the people with secondary residence status in Graz are students...
, Austria. Other instances are Roy Mason
Roy Mason (architect)
Roy Mason was a lecturer, writer, and futuristic architect who designed and built a variety of futuristic homes and other buildings in the 1970s and 1980s using low cost materials and alternative energy sources...
's Xanadu House
Xanadu House
The Xanadu Houses were a series of experimental homes built to showcase examples of computers and automation in the home in the United States. The architectural project began in 1979, and during the early 1980s three houses were built in different parts of the US: one each in Kissimmee, Florida;...
(1979), and a rare excursion into the field by Herzog & de Meuron
Herzog & de Meuron
Herzog & de Meuron Architekten, BSA/SIA/ETH is a Swiss architecture firm, founded and headquartered in Basel, Switzerland in 1978. The careers of founders and senior partners Jacques Herzog , and Pierre de Meuron , closely paralleled one another, with both attending the Swiss Federal Institute of...
in their Allianz Arena
Allianz Arena
The Allianz Arena is a football stadium in the north of Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The two professional Munich football clubs FC Bayern Munich and TSV 1860 München have played their home games at Allianz Arena since the start of the 2005–06 season...
(2005). By 2005, Norman Foster
Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank
Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM is a British architect whose company maintains an international design practice, Foster + Partners....
had involved himself in blobitecture to some extent as well with his brain-shaped design for the Philological Library
Philological Library
The Philological Library is the newest component of the campus of the Free University of Berlin. It was designed by noted architect Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank in the shape of a human brain, and opened in 2005. The library has become the centerpiece of the university's Dahlem campus...
at the Free University of Berlin
Free University of Berlin
Freie Universität Berlin is one of the leading and most prestigious research universities in Germany and continental Europe. It distinguishes itself through its modern and international character. It is the largest of the four universities in Berlin. Research at the university is focused on the...
and the Sage Gateshead
Sage Gateshead
The Sage Gateshead is a centre for musical education, performance and conferences, located in Gateshead on the south bank of the River Tyne, in the northeast of England...
opened in 2004.
Sources
- Lynn, Greg. Folds, Bodies & Blobs : Collected Essays. La Lettre volée, 1998. ISBN
- Muschamp, Herbert. The New York Times, Architecture's Claim on the Future: The Blob. July 23, 2000.
- Safire, Wiliam. The New York Times: On Language. Defenestration. December 1, 2002.
- Waters, John K. Blobitecture: Waveform Architecture and Digital Design. Rockport Publishers, 2003. ISBN