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08 · Postmodern & Contemporary

Blob Architecture

c. 1995–present

Bulbous, amoeba-like buildings wrapped in one continuous skin of curved panels.

Look for

Streamlined curves Curtain wall Cantilever
Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, Austria: an example of Blob Architecture architecture
Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, Austria. Photo: Marion Schneider & Christoph Aistleitner, CC BY-SA 2.5
Selfridges Building, Birmingham, England
Selfridges Building Birmingham, England · Bs0u10e0, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sage Gateshead, Gateshead, England
Sage Gateshead Gateshead, England · Jimfbleak at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Museum of Pop Culture, Seattle
Museum of Pop Culture Seattle · EMP|SFM, CC BY-SA 3.0
Beijing National Aquatics Center, Beijing, China
Beijing National Aquatics Center Beijing, China · Charlie fong, Public domain

what it is

Blob architecture uses a single rounded, double-curved form in which the walls and roof are one continuous surface, with no corners or flat facades. The forms are developed with 3D modeling software and built as a steel frame covered in a skin of many small panels, discs or glass sheets, each shaped to fit its place on the curve.

Future Systems' Selfridges department store in Birmingham, England (2003), is covered with 15,000 anodized aluminum discs on a blue background. Peter Cook and Colin Fournier's Kunsthaus Graz in Austria (2003) has a skin of blue acrylic panels and, on one side, 930 fluorescent lamps that can be dimmed one by one to show images. Foster and Partners' concert hall in Gateshead, England (2004), opened as Sage Gateshead and was renamed The Glasshouse in 2023; its curved glass and stainless steel shell covers three performance spaces. Herzog & de Meuron's Allianz Arena in Munich (2005) is wrapped in inflated plastic cushions.

how to spot one

Streamlined curves Rounded building corners, smooth wall surfaces and horizontal bands or grooves running along the walls. They are the main features of Streamline Moderne buildings of the 1930s and 1940s. Curtain wall An outer wall of glass and metal panels hung on a building's steel or concrete frame, carrying only its own weight. It keeps out weather on most office towers built since the 1950s. Cantilever A beam, floor or part of a building that projects beyond its support and is anchored at only one end. It lets balconies, terraces and upper floors extend outward without columns below.

Also look for

Modular repetitionPilotiFlat roof

history

American architect Greg Lynn coined the term blob architecture in 1995, during experiments with metaball software, a 3D modeling tool that creates shapes by merging spheres into one smooth surface. The Czech-British architect Jan Kaplický of Future Systems had already used the word Blob for a 1986 office building design in London. Lynn set out his ideas in Folds, Bodies & Blobs (1998) and Animate Form (1999). Earlier curved buildings, such as Buckminster Fuller's Montreal Biosphère (1967) and Frederick Kiesler's Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, begun in 1965, are treated as precursors.

Lars Spuybroek's firm NOX built the Water Pavilion in the Netherlands in 1993-1997. The largest built examples followed in the early 2000s: Selfridges and the Kunsthaus Graz both opened in 2003, Sage Gateshead in 2004 and the Allianz Arena in 2005. The Kunsthaus was built for Graz's year as European Capital of Culture in 2003. The word blobitecture first appeared in print in 2002, in William Safire's "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine, where he meant it as a criticism.

where to find it

Selfridges in Birmingham, the Kunsthaus in Graz, Austria, and the Sage Gateshead concert hall in England.

easy to confuse with

Heydar Aliyev Center, an example of Parametricism Parametricism Computer-generated fluidity: continuous curved surfaces and patterns that no hand would draw. TWA Flight Center, an example of Neo-Futurism Neo-Futurism Sculptural techno-optimism: sweeping white shells, skeletal ribs, and winglike canopies.