It could be a passing fad, or the shape of things to come. Emma Cullinan finds out why amoeba-shaped architecture is all the rage
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Actually, it's more a sort of, well, "blob".That's the term that the great thinkers and critics of our day have come up with to describe the new amoeba-shaped architecture. Or, more precisely, Blobitecture according to the author of Next Generation Architecture (Joseph Rosa, Thames and Hudson).
Don't let the title panic you. I think this is rather more of an experimental phase than the way that architecture is going, although there will be long-term influences.
Two diverse elements have led to this new type of design, and one is some sort of return to nature. Architects like Santiago Calatrava are designing curved buildings and bridges, such as the one in Dublin, which have been likened to sea creatures, as has Will Alsop's proposed Liverpool dock building, which takes the form of a spiralled blob but with faceted edges.
The second change is the advance in the use of computers. In only 20 years, architects have progressed from using computers as a basic design tool and a way in which to present clients with images of what unbuilt, schemes would look like.
Having begun by using building software, they raided the software of other disciplines, such as animation and aerodynamics: the latter is something that Frank Gehry has used to sparkling effect, to bend and expand the possibilities of design and engineering.
Gehry's Bilbao museum woke Europe up to the notion of non-geometric architecture and more recently we've had the silver/blue button-covered Selfridges store in Birmingham by Future Systems; the art gallery in Graz, Austria, by Peter Cook; and Norman Foster's London tower which, to his distaste, has been dubbed the "gherkin".
It's all seen as a break from the Cartesian grid, the composition, proportion and symmetry laid down by the classical system of architecture, as well as from the rectangular forms of modern architecture.
In reality, we've been here before, without the computers and with different materials and building technologies. Ireland's beehive huts must have been one of the first "blob" forms, a type of structure that took its inspiration from nature. In the more recent past, architect Michael Scott built a shamrock-shaped building at the New York World's Fair in 1938 so that, seen from the air, people would recognise it as the Irish pavilion.
For more blobby experimentation we must look to the work of Antoni Gaudi in Spain in the early 1900s, whose buildings seem as if sand has blown across them and stuck in various sized drifts. In America in the 1970s, John Lautner designed homes that looked like space stations. Both of these architects were ridiculed in their time: something that anyone who makes a break from the norm must be prepared for.
But many of today's blobitects believe that we are now more accepting of this type of building because we are surrounded by similar bendy objects, such as phones and children's toys, and have got used to them. It seems everything has morphed (that word is even a technical design term on some building software). Cars used to be boxy, many toys had straight edges and mobile phones began as rectangles.
Now they've all flopped into bendy shapes. Coming out of a mobile phone shop recently I saw a large telephone drive by. It was actually a convertible car but I was struck by how it looked like the endless phones I'd just seen on display.
Even magazines and newspapers have left strict typographical sizes and rules behind in the advance of computer-aided design that has seen headlines turn blue and lop to one side at two clicks of a mouse.
Some people have got carried away by such freedom: moving from sensible ergonomics to fake ergonomics. The need to think things through is still a key to good design, as is good imagination. Carefully composed curves are beautiful but let the drawing tool take control and the design can go pear-shaped.
Just think of some of the committee-designed, blobby cars that are around today. There's something to be said for one or two geniuses designing the likes of a Mini from scratch, rather than using a programme which has stored previous designs that can be adapted or has complete elements which can be combined into a finished design. Even children can create homes on Sims software.
The buildings that have actually been constructed are somewhat tamer than some of the squiggly structures than didn't make it off the computer screen.
Most of the projects in the Next Generation Architecture book have never been realised. Many were competition entries, including a green dragon that was entered into the U2 tower competition. So, had the jury been in favour, we'd have had a large reptile snoozing by the Liffey. According to the diagram that came with it, U2 would have recorded music in its head. The architect, Hernan Diaz Alonso, named the building Arach (dragon in Gaelic). It seems that Dublin is somewhat Arach-nophobic.
Ireland is short on contemporary blobs, although Newenham Mulligan & Associates, the designers of the new Roches Stores in Henry Street, have been thinking inside the box. They've inserted an oval meeting room into an existing building in Donnybrook. This huge egg, suspended above reception on lunar module legs, can be seen through the building's glass front. Curved objects work in situations such as this, as exciting elements, and spaces which people enjoy using. And savvy businesses know that housing their companies in dynamic, well-designed buildings will raise their profile.
It seems strange that many designers are being drawn back towards the amoeba. We've evolved from globule creatures into an advanced technological race, and yet what do we do with the technology? We create plastic, concrete and metal amoebas with it.
