Blobism: Sparkling Drop of Hope

For more than ten years, the design team of Architectural firm “Stilistika” - Vladimir Burmistrov and Ivan Zverkov, create their works in a unique brand of avantgarde and innovative blobstyle architecture, which valiantly and steadily gains the minds of the progressive part of the professional community of architects. More and more often construction investors are turning to the architecture of this singular unique modern style, generating outstanding architectural objects of one-of-a-kind and distinguished look.

The term ‘blob architecture’ was coined by architect Greg Lynn in 1995 in his experiments in digital design with metaball graphical software, when he actively joined this vibrant art process of creating an innovative architecture of new generation. Though the term ‘blob architecture’ was in vogue already in the mid- 1990s, but 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, using the English word Blob.

Then the subject was developed by known architectural critic John Waters in his unique research “Blobitecture” (2003). In his interpretation this architecture of fluid non-linear nature of the teardrop shapes is very reminiscent of some guttering ever changing, seemingly melting mass of elastic curved surfaces. Such an object at international English is identified by the word blob. This notion Mr. Waters raised on a vanguard flag of innovative international architectural movement in his landmark study of 2003. Since then, all the progressive architects of the world create unique, vibrant, memorable imagery of their individual buildings in the style of the blob. The world architectural elite accepted this term, having agreed that the blob is something hitherto unknown, something changing, flowing and moving, and definitely of organic origin.

A little later, well-known blob-designer Karim Rashid in his signification of a design technique of complex objects used the same “blob” notion, but with a new acronym interpretation of the “b.l.o.b” – binary large object, describing this way the technical electronic blob-design, as a way to create objects with complex curved and bent in all directions surfaces, which requires the design of long-parametric digital recording.

More and more well-known architects are attracted to these new blob-forms of expression of modern architectural thought. Many of the most celebrated writers of modern times may be regarded as individual manifestations of this innovative trend. In Russia today, may also be found the stalwarts of this architectural style. Over the past few years all over the world appeared a lot of interesting examples that were created in the field of this architectural style. And now we can certainly claim that at long last the mainstream of modern architecture of the beginning of the XXI century took shape within blob-culture philosophy. In this regard, the conversation with a creative duo from Architectural firm “Stilistika” - Vladimir Burmistrov and Ivan Zverkov, consistently working in hyper modern blob-style and creating vibrant, recognizable architectural objects in Russia and abroad is represented to us rather actual.

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TEXT : VLADIMIR BURMISTROV,
ILLUSTRATIONS IVAN ZVERKOV: ARCHITECTURAL FIRM “STILISTIKA”