10-best examples of blobitecture named
The Metropol Parasol in Seville, Spain, designed by J. Mayer H. Architects was completed in 2011.
Designed by Spacelab Cook-Fournier and completed in 2003, the Kunsthaus Graz in Graz, Austria is colloquially known as the friendly alien.
No stranger to avant-garde architecture, Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project (2000) in Seattle, WA is a colourful addition to the blobitecture fraternity.
Not to be outdone, the west coast of the United States also has an example of blobitecture – New York by Gehry at Eight Spruce Street, completed in 2011.
A decade on, the Selfridges Building in Birmingham, England by Future Systems has attained iconic status.
The Sage Gateshead in Gateshead, England by Foster + Partners was completed in 2004 had has gained awards for being both the best and worst building.
De Admirant Entrance Building in Eindhoven, Netherlands by M. Fuksas architetto was completed in 2010.
Golden Terraces (Złote Tarasy) in Warsaw, Poland by The Jerde Partnership, completed in 2007, comprises nearly 5000 individual panes of glass.
The second Foster + Partners building to make the list, the City Hall in London, England (2002) has been derisively compared to a misshapen egg.
The Gehry-designed DZ Bank Building, Berlin, Germany is a mixed-use building situated near the Brandenburg Gate.
Once completed in 2014, the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création will cement Frank Gehry as the reigning master of blobitecture.
Gigantic alien-looking buildings that bring to mind melted guitars, mushroom-like parasols and UFOs: that’s how the structures that fit into the style known as Blob Architecture, or Blobitecture have been described.
In a report compiled this month by Hamburg-based international building data company Emporis, ten of the world’s best known buildings in this style were identified.
“Their unconventional, right-angle-free geometric shapes are made possible by state-of-the-art computer-aided processes,” the report said.
“It is an incontestable fact, however, that blobitecture, with its organic, flowing forms, stands like no other design movement for a shift away from conventional architectural ideas – and is able to surprise time and again.”
Emporis cited the Experience Music Project in Seattle, or ‘The Blob’ as it is commonly referred to, as one of the best examples of the style. The soft, flowing forms of this structure come together to make a complex whole, while the metallic façade reflects a huge array of colours, from gold to violet.
Others include Warsaw’s Golden Terraces, with its “wavy roof created from 4,700 separate glass elements, resting like a frozen liquid over the atrium”, and the futuristic Selfridges building in Birmingham, England.
