page_title: Blobitecture
section_title: Precedents
hierarchical_section_title: Blobitecture / Precedents
caption_attribution_description: Jürgen Partenheimer, Oscar Niemeyer's Copan Building, construction end 1953
context_page_description: Blobitecture, blobism and blobismus are terms for a movement in architecture in which buildings have an organic, amoeba-shaped, building 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'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.
context_section_description: 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 a 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.   Buckminster Fuller's work with geodesic domes provided both stylistic and structural precedents. Geodesic domes form the building blocks for works including The Eden Project.  Niemeyer's Edificio Copan 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.  
   
  The Flintstone House by William Nicholson in 1976, was built over large inflated balloons.  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. Similarly, one would have to include the work of Vittorio Giorgini (Casa Saldarini), Pascal Haüsermann and especially that of Antti Lovag as examples of successfully built blobs. The latter built the famous Palais Bulles close to Cannes on the French Côte d'Azur, owned by fashion designer Pierre Cardin.
  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. Lastly, the emergence of new aesthetic-oriented architectural theories like OOO have led to contemporary architects explicitly examine the formal-technological-theoretical implications of blobitecture, including digital-physical augmented reality works of architects like iheartblob.
caption: The Edificio Copan by  Oscar Niemeyer, 1957
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot G2", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2007:02:17 12:19:01", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "224", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1086", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7010", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "4", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2004:08:17 19:23:49", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2004:08:17 19:23:49", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "287/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "2", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "13107/200", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "149/16", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "519", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "425", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "2272", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1704", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "936", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "56800/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "56800/7", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}