Blobitecture: Waveform Architecture and Digital Design [Hardcover]

John K. Waters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2003

The Apple iMac; the new VW Beetle; the Oh Chair; the Guggenheim Bilbao museum. These are all classic examples of blobism, a futuristic retelling of the curve, resulting in protoplasmic forms designed by computers. A growing number of inventive architects are now embracing this concept, making "blobitecture" the hottest global trend in the industry. This title focuses exclusively on the phenomenon in detail: how the process works; the geometrics and environmental challenges it presents; the sophisticated software that allows artists to bend the lines of traditional architecture and the stunning work produced by this art form. Featuring curved walls to blob-esque furniture to Greg Lynn's Embryological House and Koloatan and McDonald's Title House, this is both a showcase of the best in blobism, illustrated through computer-drawn renderings, illustrations and photographs, and a guide to applying it in a designer's own work.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John K. Waters is a freelance journalist who has covered the technology beat from Silicon Valley for 15 years. He is senior correspondent for Application Development Trends magazine and West Coast contributing editor for IT World?s online news site. The author of over a dozen books, he lives in Palo Alto, California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Rockport Publishers (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592530001
• ISBN-13: 978-1592530007
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 9.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,130,180 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Journalist and author John K. Waters has been covering the information technology beat from Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area for a range of print and online media for more than 20 years.


As Editor-at-Large for Application Development Trends he writes the WatersWorks blog and contributes news and feature stories about enterprise software development, management, and security. He also writes software reviews for Law Technology News and contributes regularly to The Technology Horizons in Education Journal and Campus Technology. His work has appeared in Redmond Developer News, Virtualization Review, Microsoft Certified Professional, The UK Register, CIO, Tech Target, and many others.


John has also written more than a dozen books, including a new entry in the Adams Media "Everything" series: The Everything Guide to Social Media, which was published in November 2010. Early in his career, he wrote numerous computer game guides, including the original strategy guide for the blockbuster "Diablo." And he co-scripted the documentary film, Silicon Valley: A 100 Year Renaissance.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Blob landscape survey, January 1, 2004

By 

Jack Vaughan (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blobitecture: Waveform Architecture and Digital Design (Hardcover)

This copiously illustrated survey posits architect Frank Gehry in an unfolding evolution of a phenomenon described as "Blob." The book, 'Blobitecture', shows the antecedents to Gehry, and parallel movements that have spawned such notable industrial designs as the Eames chairs and the Apple iMac.

Form-follows-function was a stringent dictate on designers for many recent years. Advances in computers and computation [not to mention composite materials] have allowed Gehry to visualize designs that would not, on the face of it, seem to hold up, and come to up with the means to make these buildings - drooping, swooping, and so on - stand.

Waters notes that this style arose as something of an anti-machine impulse, yet it could not have occurred without machine technology, specifically the computer technology that could provide underpinnings for 'improbably fluid forms.'

The author uncovers some things that surprise. A Disneyland Monsanto house of the future [which could be a happy home for Zippy the Pinhead], could not be readily demolished after its stay as a futurist grotto was at an end, Waters notes. The wrecking ball bounced off the [perhaps fiberglass] Monsanto house, and good old sledge hammers had to do the dirty deed!

There have been a lot of movements, some that vaporize in the blink of an eye. Does Blob as a serious movement hold up to scrutiny? Here, Waters takes a journalist's tack, and leaves the final judgment largely to the reader and future historians.

A different approach than the movie The Blob [from whence the movement gains its name it seems], where, as the movie trailer had it, "there's no stopping the blob [a "blood-curdling threat"] as it goes from town to town."

Missing perhaps is a look at Gaudi, and Dali [especially the latter's work at the 1939 World's Fair] - two individuals that melted a building or two in their day. I guess I say this because I can recall when I first saw Gehry's now famous Gugenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain [depicted gloriously in Blobitecture], that's what I thought of. Waters does point to Eero Saarinen and his TWA Terminal as a potent precursor of Gehry, but photos he includes are of the Saarinen's St. Louis arch, to my mind less of a pointer to Frank. But the book on the main is quite generous in its illustration of things blob like.