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'Blobitecture' from 'blob architecture', 'blobism' or 'blobismus' are terms for a current movement in architecture in which buildings have an organic, amoeba-shaped, bulging form.^[1]
Implied in the name is an off-beat allusion to the science fiction film ''The Blob'' from 1958. 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's "On Language" column in the ''New York Times Magazine'' in an article entitled ''Defenestration''.^[2] 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.

Contents

Origins of the term "blob architecture"

Precedents

Built Examples

Gallery

References

Sources

Origins of the term "blob architecture"

The term 'blob architecture' was coined by architect Greg Lynn 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 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 or NURB, freeform surfaces, and the digitizing of sculpted forms by means akin to computed tomography.^[3]

Precedents

One precedent is Archigram, 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, also member of Archigram created blob-like architecture in his projects from the 1960s, such as ''Walking Cities'' and ''Instant City'', as did Michael Webb with ''Sin Centre''.^[4] 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 (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 in Barcelona and of the Expressionists like Bruno Taut and Hermann Finsterlin.

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's Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1997) and the Experience Music Project (2000), though these, in the narrower sense are not blob buildings, even though they were designed by advanced computer-aided design tools, CATIA in particular.^[5] The reason for this is that they were designed from physical models rather than from computer manipulations. The first full blob building however was build in the Netherlands by Lars Spuybroek (NOX) and Kas Oosterhuis. Called the water pavilion (1993-1997) it does not only have a fully computer-based shape manufactured with computer-aided tools but also has 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 and Colin Fournier's Kunsthaus (2003) in Graz, Austria. Other instances are Roy Mason's Xanadu House (1979) the buildings of organicist Bart Prince and a rare excursion into the field by Herzog & de Meuron in their Allianz Arena (2005). By 2005, Norman Foster had involved himself in blobitecture to some extent as well with his brain-shaped design for the Philological Library at the Free University of Berlin and the Sage Gateshead opened in 2004.

Gallery

References

1. A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, , James Stevens, Curl, Oxford University Press, , ISBN 0198606788
2. Safire, Wiliam. ''The New York Times'': On Language. Defenestration. December 1 2002.
3. John K. Waters, ''Blobitecture: Waveform Architecture and Digital Design''(Rockport, 2003).
4. ''Archigram'', Peter Cook, editor (Princeton Architectural Press, 1999).
5. For a discussion see: Waters, John K. Ibid.

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

★ Prototype shows that buildings may someday be constructed by robots Margaret Wertheim