Erdos Museum / MAD

good god….another shapeless blob that costs alot of money.

Avena Soap………………………..melting……….kids love it, many Archaictects dont.

potato with a window…
couragous engineers

A while ago someone coined the term ‘blob architecture’ – That was at least 10 years ago. However, with the advancements in computer and building technology, the term has become somewhat outdated – perhaps a new term needs to be coined.

I would like to propose: “Cow Dung Architecture” – as we know “Cow Dung” is not a new term, but combined with the word “architecture” it takes on a new meaning which is appropriate to designs like this one. (see link)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_dung

Should you not be completely convinced that “Cow Dung Architecture” is a fiting term, feel free to submit what YOU think an appropriate term would be.

Have a good day.

I am sorry, but…is this supposed to be aesthetically appealing in some way? Because in my world, this is downright ugly. No sense of proportion or relation to the surroundings. The master plan drawing is ridiculous and so is the explanation.

This looks silly altogether…a piece of melted whatever, punched unconsciously into ugliness and clad, of course, in unobtainium.

I thought that when you’re “designing” blobs, you’re not supposed to stop at the first randomly generated thingie and send it to the engineers, but you know… study, research, develop…Well, guess not.

Yep, really beautiful.

It’s not a blob, a bunker (museums need no windows),a potato and not any cow dung.It’s a piece of quite fine and imaginative high-tech architecture. And I dont’t love it, but I like it.

Oh, how good we are at telling the ugly from the beautiful. This is architecture, -a term used by anyone and reasonable to use already when someone has put their foot in the sand and made a mark.

What kind of architecture though ? Well, i think it’s still in research. I say like the swiss architect i cannot remember the name of, “I don’t do blobs, not because I think it is not interesting, but because I don’t know how to argue for that type of architecture”.

Everyone should be open to theese buildings. The argument of making it a mirror I don’t really buy, because a square box can also be made reflective. as for the skin system, I think Snohetta is going to come up with the first ever beautiful blob-skin, -bent steel tubes that are 40-60mm in diameter.

Please could someone put some context into the pics!

Dear David,
Of course i will not give you one or ten exemples of what could illustrate what i could consider to be “good” or “bad” architecture because it would be too simplistic.
As i am about to write an answer i see Mr Cheap gave a good one already.
I don’t have anything against “blobs”, but i think it’s much more demanding in term of design reflexion than a “box” regarding to the context especially (although designing a nice box is not given to everyone ;-) ). To me it just look like a lack consideration about the project if you decide to do it just as a blob for a blob, especially when we are talking about a program like a museum!
Not taking care of the context and the program seems to be a speciality of Mr Ma Yansong, and as a former Hadid team member, i think he forgot to take a lot of lessons from her but didn’t forgot to take the signature stamp as a marketing tool.
I strongly believe that it’s the context and the program that leads a project (nothing new eh?) to stand for a long time on its legs, and the consideration it have for the human scale.
This answer can take the form of a blob why not.
In each MAD project i only see the expression of a big ego. Like if the purpose was to mark the land with their logo out of context. Why not play with the imposed conditions and make it yours in place of crushing the place to ignore it?
Ok to get a “nice object”? (and i don’t consider the gesture of this design as a nice object in my own taste) I then prefer have a collection of nice object on my shelf.
MAD seem have forgot that a city isn’t a shelf except maybe in China’s new cities and Middle-East, and we are here in China… And so much materials and efforts to make a skin stand-up that is just so disconnected of the reality of building up an architecture. So much steel tubes for a soap bubble, there’s something fake here for me.
I’m open to hear anyone who could make me consider this project as a very nice museum for Erdos city and its inhabitants. Well at least it’s nice if it can attract enought onlookers in this region and that’s maybe what it’s supposed to do, but i’m still bored to see another building that looks like a old chewing-gum stuck on the ground.

I call it ” bubblegum design “…:-) design..not architecture. It looks interesting -same opinion like malgorzata and david – but if it is a good architecture or not , we cannot say it. What we see is a cover ..but there are a lot of other important architecture elements ( joninberlin specify some of them…) we dont know . We cannot read them out of those pictures! I think we should stop to judge “definately” an architecture on the base of visualisations…it is only the package of the architecture good. What is “inside” could be precious but also rubbish . I am not shure but suppose (alone becouse of the huge amount of steel used for the cover construction) in this case, this “thing” is as architecture as a whole despite interesting cover just ordinary, something in the middle between precious and rubbish , but more second then first.

Random achitecture.

Sometimes architecture has to have an innate quality to it that elevates the human spirit, that separates itself from the mundane and I think that cultural project are the perfect stage for that sort of exploration, you can’t always have these strict parameters by which you define architecture or by which you think architecture should be judged by(ergo, response to gravity, functionality and so on) because then you would be limiting the creative side of this practice we love so much, YES we have to be responsible with this power we are given but at the same time the architecture we produce has to be a fitting tribute to that power …NOT TO DEFEND BLOB ARCHITECTURE WHICH BY THE WAY WAS COINED MORE THAN TEN YEARS AGO… a sculpture in the garden (“a new city center” any one reminded of Brezilia by Oscar Niemeyer) is more of what it is, oh and its a museum…

at least with that indifferent and undefinite blob form it doesn’t have to be accurately built; whitch I doubt it’ll be in the end.. so we don’t have to worry about unexact details…

Tommy, thanks for your comment, I enjoyed reading it. (In fact, I’ve bookmarked your blog).

As for my ‘blobs as legs’ comment (admittedly a poor choice of words which was not meant to come across as unpolitically correct) – point well taken. I do admit that my strong opinion towards ‘blob architecture’ hinders my ability to acknowledge and appreciate differences. Something I need to work on.

My bad…

joninberlin, no worries. I am in fact guilty of my own trite comments from time to time. Feel free to jab me in the ribs when I make one. Glad you’re reading!

What I don’t understand about blobs is the thought process the designers of them go through. I mean when would I ever be presented with a brief, take it to my desk sit down with some trace and do sketches of blobs? I don’t see what gets people to move in this direction when first coming up with ideas. Its like that sketches of Frank Gehry movie when he was directing his 50 year old man servant to cut and fold paper. It just made then entire process seem completely arbitrary. Why is this blob the ideal solution for a museum in Inner Mongolia? What sets it apart from a giant shopping mall in the UK (that Future Systems Project) or a pavilion for Chanel? There seems to be no response to climate, context, culture, materiality, sustainability, or the fact our entire world is going through an economic depression.

I assume firms are producing things like this to be original, unique, to get on some magazine covers or something. That may have worked 10 years ago. Today they are just rehashing a more creative designer’s idea.

Given the topology of the Ordos project, this form is as legitimate as any other. How can anyone be asked to generate an architectural response to an abyssal void? Whatever would be appropriate?

Alas the Ordos enterprise lacks even the focus or sense of purpose that could be expected from a World’s Fair or Olympic Village. Even a trade show has more raison d’etre.

Here there is no Jean Charles L’Enfant, Haussman, Niemeyer, or Corbusier acting as the Morpheus of form for the truly civic aspirations of nations in moments of birth, renewal, and transformation. Nothingness begets nothingness and I find it very difficult to be surprised by what seems the obvious origin and end of this project.

That said, there is nothing inherently wrong with organic form. Investigation of the plasticity of materials, concrete for example, has a long tradition in thoughtful architecture going back to the Romans. There have been so many miraculous fusions of expressive engineering and architecture that they would be impossible to list. Some examples that come to mind are Hoover Dam (or any dam), any of the concrete houses of Lautner from Garcia to Arango, and just about anything by Nervi or Calatrava. I almost forgot to mention Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal, a masterpiece of expression, function, and imagination.

What makes the difference is purpose. When the telos of the building and its form become one, practically no form can fail. This isn’t form follows function, it is form as function. When there is no telos, no purpose, no reason then form suddenly takes meaningless flights of fancy and becomes an end in itself.

I vividly recall Frank Gehry’s design for the Hollywood Public Library. Impressive from the street, you realized upon entering the building that its appropriateness for Hollywood derived exclusively from the fact that it is pure stage set architecture. This is building as parapet or painted backdrop with any functional program slapped on the backside willy-nilly. FOG will tell you this was because of the budget. The truth is he just doesn’t care what goes on inside the sculpture. The one time he did care, Disney Hall, there is a clear telos and an incredible result.

This is meant to say that neither is “deconstruction”, whatever that has come to imply, a non viable form. There is no bad form, only form that lacks a motive force to become architecture.

Right now on dwell.com there is a marvelous piece on airports and the future of aviation. There is an illustration from a futurist showing a legitimate concept for a lighter than air ship perhaps 5 times the size of the Graf Hindenburg. The form isn’t all that distant from this supposed museum. The difference is that the airship design is purposeful. It is meant to gracefully rise above the land and float through the air from place to place like a giant sperm whale raised from the deep. Turning air into ocean is a beautiful metaphor and it inspires a form with purpose, dignity, and beauty (which also happens to be energy efficient and practical).

Here there is no purpose, and that is not the architects fault. If the program speaks in gibberish then the reply will be just as incoherent. If anything this kind of project is a warning, letting us know that forethought must precede city making.

Terry Glenn Phipps

It is peculiar that this project presentation contains no plans nor any suggestion on what sort of a museum is it? May be it’s a museum of blobs and boogers? Then the form would be perfectly justified…

Does anybody have a guess on what software they use to generate these forms? 3ds Max? Rhino? Catia?

syd088, my guess is maya.

Hmmmm… See my reactions on these commentaries here…

Let’s not forget that “we”, the architects, are merely dancing to the tune of the puppet master. In struggling to understand architecture … if I was to follow the trend of thought of … say:
Joshua – I would be sitting on a fence for quite a while.
joninberlin – Lord forgive her “trites” … I would probably find myself at the butchers, and possibly renaming ever “cut” while forgetting the purpose of going there in the first place. “These type of buildings fit more into the ‘installation’ category. Structures without the same amount of social responsibility. Much like Expo buildings …” Expos do have a theme and is intended (in parts) to highlight specific “issues”; IF they have not been hijacked for other intent.
Ultra man – I would have to own a fleet of vehicles after I am done with “performative analysis of the site”; if performance is a truthful criteria of choice.
All the rest is a mix of styles, forms, contextual, regional, construction methods … essays/comments but I am now most drawn to the use/involvement of CAD in defining this period of architecture we are in. It is the natural discourse; post industrialisation, the advancement in technology, mass-consumerism, blah blah blah … Computers and software are the new arsenal in our quest for a “better tomorrow”. In the not too distant future, a child may voice-activate a box to produce “these” architecture. So, where do we stand as “responsible/responsive” architects? Redundancy may be our own doing, if you cannot prove our capability and the capacity to push beyond what has been on discussions here?
By the way, I was at the Science Museum over the weekend … there are illustrations, diagrams, models of mathematically arrived surfaces, Da Vinci-esque contraptions … all producing much more fluid and coherent shapes that I have ever seen. There, I credit those results crafted from non-human interference, much of the devices were gravity/kinetics driven via a series of ingeniously connected weights, pulley, governors, gyroscopes ….
Finally, if we consider ourselves this progressive in architecture … I shall borrow the “low res blob” comment from another post. It firstly made me chuckle but then a realisation …. Gaudi is the father of b-architecture!
Well …. Ok! I am one wacky becky from rehab.

intresting potato !!! ( In ten years we will say ” too much potatos around the world….”)