Aqua Tower, Chicago
Isn't that mind-blowing?? It makes me want to touch it...I wonder if it seems like it is shimmering when you are walking on the street. As a moving viewer, your perspective of all of those planes would change with every step you took--in effect the building would look like it was morphing as you move around it. If you think about it, everything does this...even if you walk around a box, the box's dimensions will change relative to your position to it, but we don't really thing about it that way when we walk around a box because we understand the entire form without having to see all of it.
This building takes your normal perception of a form (box) and forces you to analyze the way you interact with your own process of interpreting that visual information. I think that's great--bringing new perspective to everyone who is in seeing-distance of the building--that's a lot of people that probably wouldn't think about things like that otherwise...
This is the Experience Music Project, Seattle. It is an example of "blobitecture" (all of these buildings are) which is apparently a relatively new style of architecture in which organic, often blob-like forms are achieved in architecture through the use of special computer algorithms that calculate how to distribute weight and balance etc...to any form. I don't really know much about it...I think the idea is that architects can design whatever form they want with this technology, because they can just create the form in the computer and the algorithms will figure out how to make it architecturally stable. Isn't that nuts? Architecture was previously limited by known support structures--think arches, post and lintel structures, suspension, etc... but now architects can literally build in any shape they want. Add to this the technology of extremely pliable and flexible building materials and you get blobitecture. I think it's extraordinary.
I like that this one is called the "Experience Music Project." I don't know what it is for...but it seems like it could be a 3-D visual representation of music...with the different colors and textures and curves and angles--sometimes I feel like my experience with music is similar to this.
The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain
This is one of my favorite buildings I have ever seen I think...and I haven't even seen it in person. It's like the building is dancing. It also reminds me of sculpture and how dynamic sculpture is a different experience from every vantage point--you can never really capture something like this in a two-dimensional format like a photograph--you have to walk around it and inside of it and view it from all the possible vantage points to really understand it's form.
Selfridges, Birmingham, UK
This one is kind of weird--but it is definitely "blob"-like. Those reflective discs are an interesting choice
Zlote Tarasy in Warsaw, Poland
I really like this last one--I love how it looks like the buildings are just melting onto the city. It must be so cool to be inside that space. I don't even know what this building is for--but I think it would be great for any purpose...museum, office building, public library, government building...everything should be able to have cool buildings. I wonder what it looks like at night...maybe the glass becomes translucent and you can see the inside all lit up...or maybe the glass stays reflective and instead projects the reflection of all the city lights around it.
