‘Blobs’ in architecture are more politely known as ‘free-formed shapes’ and have now become more respectable than ever.

Even the critic Charles Jencks, writing in Architectural Review (February 2003) identifies this as a new paradigm in architecture when he refers to the ‘Blobmeisters’, such as Greg Lynn, Eric van Egeret and Kees Osterhuis, as ‘those determined to capture the field with blob grammarsobtuse theories based on computer analogies’.

 Norman Foster can be said to have joined the gang with30 St Mary Axe (the Swiss Re building) in the City of London, the offices for the London MayorGateshead’s new music centre.

Meanwhile, Will Alsop’s Fourth Grace for Liverpool’s Pier Head is a par excellence. Blobmeister’s themselves claim the early influence of Frank Gehry and the ‘Bilbao effect’.

Certainly, Gehry’s means of translating free-formed models into real buildings using computer-aided predictionmeasuring techniques gave others confidence that it was not just a form-finding exercise. The challenge is to find constructional techniques, such as the explosion forming of metal and twisted glass, which can used to build these forms within economic restraints.