Blobs, or Why Tectonics Is Square and Topology Is Groovy

Author(s): Greg Lynn

Source: ANY: Architecture New York, No. 14, Tectonics Unbound: KERNFORM AND
KUNSTFORM REVISITED ! (1996), pp. 58-61
Published by: Anyone Corporation
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41852143
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 Greg Lynn

(or Why Tectonics Is Square and Topology Is Groovy) =

Historically, discussions of tectonics have involved the difficult task of combining the particular with the general.
In this instance, the particular is understood to be contingent factors such as the highly
localized techniques of construction and the spatial techniques associated with use and organization.
The general, meanwhile, stands for universalized ideals embodied in spatial typologies. fig. 1

Discourses on tectonics inevitably attempt to negotiate, however uneasily,

the contingent, local concerns of the present with generalized typologies considered to be essentially timeless.
But the discourse of tectonics has never encountered the blob.

Or should I say blobs. Many blobs, of all different sizes and shapes and irreducible typologi-
cal essences. Blobs that threaten to overrun a terrorized and deterritorialized tectonics like
a bad B movie.

Blobs constitute a formal intervention in contemporary discussions of tectonics. That

is, blobs intervene on the level of form, but they promise to seep into those gaps in repre-
sentation where the particular and the general have been forced to reconcile - not to
suture those gaps with their sticky surfaces but to call attention to the necessary existence
of gaps in representation. Blobs suggest alternative strategies of structural organization
and construction that provide intricate and complex new ways of relating the homoge-
neous or general to the heterogeneous or particular.
Blobs enrich the discourse of tectonics by confounding the terms of tectonic dis-
course. Blobs cannot be reduced to a typological essence: no two blobs are identical; the
form and organization of any given blob is contextually intensive and therefore depen-
dent on exigent conditions for internal organization. Most importantly, blobs are simulta-
neously alien and detached from any place yet capable of melding with their contexts.
In any definition of the architectonic, there is an implication of the arche as being an ideal
global singularity where the "tectonic" involves a particular local identity. For these reasons,
blobs promise to open up strategic spaces in tectonic discussions, precisely in the discursive
spaces where the particular, the multiple, the contingent is conflated with the global singular.
This essay argues for a reconsideration of the global singular as a globular singular.
But first more about blobs. The image, morphology, and behavior of the blob present a
sticky, viscous, mobile composite entity capable of incorporating disparate external elements
into itself. Blobbiness will be treated in three regards: first, in the images of science-fiction
horror films; second, in the philosophical definition of viscous composite entities; and last, in
contemporary construction techniques.

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fig. 1 The Blob, 1956, film still
fig. 2 Meta-balls in formation
fig. 3 Meta-balls
fig. 4 Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, 1978, film still
Perhaps the most direct route into any discussion of blobs is to invoke a few canonic Hollywood B film blobs. These
films present a paradigm for an aqueous, alien structure that moves through the city absorbing materials. Blobs, in
these horror films, are organisms that are topologically inverted. They do not ingest material into an interior cavity
but, like a single-cell organism, stick to things that are then slowly incorporated through their surface.
In all of the Blob films, from the 1958 original starring Steve McQueen to the 1988 remake with Kevin Dillon,
the alien has no discrete mouth that swallows but instead is a digestive system turned inside out (fig. l).The
blob is all surface, not pictorial or flat, but sticky, thick, and mutable. In virtually every instance, a B-film blob is
a gelatinous surface with no depth per se; its interior and exterior are continuous. The shock effect in these films
is often generated through the display of partially digested victims suspended within a gelatinous ooze. These
blobs are neither singular nor multiple since they have no discrete envelope. 1 Essentially, a blob is a surface so
massive that it becomes a proto-object. It is composed of gelatinous materials with the coherence of a solid but
the amorphousness of a liquid. Gelatinous organisms, like fluids, have no internally regulated shape but depend
on contextual constraints or containment for their form. Although they have minor shaping forces such as
surface tension and viscosity, they possess neither a global form nor a single identity.
The spatiality of these blob organisms, and the manner in which they slither, creep, and squirm, instigates
disgust and queasiness in the movie audience. Three principles to this movement and spatiality are characteristic
of all blobs: 1. Blobs possess the ability to move through space as if space were aqueous. Blob form is deter-
mined not only by the environment but also by movement. A "near solid," to borrow Luce Irigaray s term,z has
no ideal static form outside of the particular conditions in which it is situated, including its position and speed.
Gel solids are defined not as static but as trajectories. In no film, to my knowledge, does a blob ever return to
some point of origin or point of rest. 2, Blobs can absorb objects as if they were liquified. These incorporated
objects float in a deep surface without being ingested into an interior cavity. Often ingested masses become
individuated organs in a larger mutant whole, as in The Thing (1951) starring James Arness, or the 1 982 remake
starring Kurt Russell. 3. The term blob connotes a thing which is neither singular nor multiple but an intelli-
gence that behaves as if it were singular and networked but in its form can become virtually infinitely multiplied
and distributed.
ILudD» uradí tiOo® (BDofe
If postwar American visual culture provides architecture with a working knowledge of blob behavior and
morphology, certain philosophical currents, dating back to Leibniz and reintroduced to architects by way of 14.59
Gilles Deleuze and Michel Serres,5 help to clarify the logic of the blob's structural system. The mechanics of
blobs, like Irigaray s "Mechanics of Fluids,"4 is characterized by complex incorporations and becomings
rather than by conflicts and contradictions. These fluid entities are described as being "quasi-solid," incom-
plete beings whose symbolization has been ignored due to "specific dynamics" charac-
teristic of real fluids. Leibniz's Ais Combinatoria (1 666) quietly inaugurated an alternative
tradition, one that does not exclude a theory of combination from discussions of order
but instead makes the act of combination the primary mode of both the composition
and the differentiation of identity. While Cartesianism is
1 Possible exceptions include the liquid-
associated with the isolation and reduction of systems to metal monster in James Cameron's
their constitutive identities, Leibniz's combinatorial uni- Terminator 2(1991), and the underwater
creature in his earlier film. The Abyss
verse is founded on the changes in identity that take place (1989).
2 Anyone interested in theories of proto-
with greater degrees of complexity and connection. plasmic and liquid identities should con-
To develop a theory of complexity not founded on the sult Luce Irigaray 's"The 'Mechanics' of
Fluids," in This Sex Which Is Not One, trans.
contradiction of differences requires, then, a reconsidera- Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell
tion of identity as neither reducing toward primitives nor University Press. 1985), 106-18.
3 See Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the
emerging toward wholes. A theory of complexity that Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis:
abandons both the single and the multiple in favor of a University of Minnesota Press, 1 993); and
Michel Serres, Systèmes de Leibniz et ses modèles
series of continuous multiplicities and singularities is one way of escaping a dialecti-mathématiques, 2nd ed. (Paris: Presses univer-
sitaires de France, 1982).
cal definition of identity. This mandates the development of theories of multiplicitous
4 "Yet one must know how to listen otherwise than in
organizations that cannot be attributable as one or as many. Likewise, one approach to
good form(s) to hear what i( says. That it is con-
tinuous, compressible, dilatable, viscous,
a theory of complexity might be to develop a notion of the composite or the assem-conductible, diffusable, . . .That it is
blage understood as neither multiple nor single, neither internally contradictory unending, potent and impotent owing its
resistance to the countable; that it enjoys
nor unified. Complexity involves the fusion of multiple and different systems into an
and suffers from a greater sensitivity to
assemblage that behaves as a singularity while remaining irreducible to any single pressures; that it changes - in volume or in
force, for example - according to the
simple organization. degree of heat; that it is, in its physical
The next step involves the development of an abstract model of complexity. reality, determined by friction between
two infinitely neighboring entities -
Throughout the history of philosophy, geometry has been invoked to accomplishdynamics of the near and not the proper,
this task. Previous systems based on complexity and contradiction took the repre-movements coming from quasi contact
between two entities hardly definable as
sentational form of conflicting geometric systems. The question remains: What such (in a coefficient of viscosity measured
spatial model can represent a complex relationship irreducible either to the contra-
in poises, from Poiseuille, sic), and not ener-
gy of a finite system; that it allows itself to
diction of the many or the holistic unity of the one? A rigorous theorization of be easily traversed by flow by virtue of its
conductivity to currents coming from other
diversity and difference within the discipline of architecture requires an alternativefluids or exerting pressure through the
system of complexity in form - a complex formalism that is in essence freely differ-
walls of a solid; that it mixes with bodies of
a like state, sometimes dilutes itself in them
entiated. Recently, a typology of topological geometries for modeling complex in an almost homogeneous manner, which
aggregates has been developed. The most interesting example is the development makes the distinction between the one and
the other problematical; and furthermore
of "isomorphic polysurfaces" or what in the special-effects and animation industry
that it is already diffuse 'in itself,' which dis-
is referred to as "meta-clay," "meta-ball," or "blob" models. concerts any attempt at static identification."
Irigaray, "The 'Mechanics' of Fluids," 111.
The explanation of the organization of these topological geometries actually out- 5 See "Computer Animisms," Assemblage 26
(April 1995): 8-9.
lines a working schema for a new typology of complexity Perhaps, if Leibniz had had
the resources of these topological models during his debate with Descartes over gravity and force, we could have
avoided three centuries of reductive Cartesianism. For example, in blob modeling, objects are defined by monad-
like primitives with internal forces of attraction and mass. Unlike a conventional geometric primitive such as a
sphere, which has its own autonomous organization, a meta-ball is defined in relation to other objects (figs. 2, 3).
Its center, surface area, mass, and organization are determined by other fields of influence. The inner volume
defines a zone within which the meta-ball will connect with another meta-ball to form a single surface. The outer
volume defines a zone within which other meta-ball objects can influence and inflect the surface of the meta-ball
object. The surfaces are surrounded by two halos of relational influence, one defining a zone of fusion, the other
defining a zone of inflection. When two or more meta-ball objects are related to one another, given the appropri-
ate proximity of their halos, they can either mutually redefine their respective surfaces based on their particular
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 gravitational properties or they can actually fuse into one contiguous surface defined not
by the summation or average of their surfaces and gravities but instead by the interactions of their
respective centers and zones of inflection and fusion. A meta-ball aggregate is defined as a single sur-
face whose contours result from the interaction and assemblage of the multiple internal fields defining it.
In this sense, an aggregate geometric object such as this is a multiplicity; it is simultaneously singular
in its continuity and multiplicitous in its internal differentiation. From the perspective of the unified surface
it is a singularity (as it is contiguous but not reducible to a single order) and from the perspective of the con-
stituent components it is a multiplicity (as it is composed of disparate components put into a complex rela-
tion). Temporal development manifest as both subtle and catastrophic movements and fluctuations within and
between interacting components results in varying degrees of singularity in more global or large-scale structures.
In the case of the isomorphic polysurfaces, a low number of interacting components and/ or a stable relationship
of those components over time lead(s) to a global form that is more simple and stable and less complex and
unstable. The qualification of their organization as more or less simple - as opposed to reducible - and as more or
less stable - rather than static - is a crucial distinction. A high number of components and/ or a gradual or
abrupt change in relative position of those components over time result (s) in a global form that is more
complex and unstable and less simple and stable. Simplicity and complexity are separated by degrees
along a continuum in this schema. There is no contradiction between systems but rather differing
qualities of relative interactions and their transformation in time.
This system of meta-ball modeling is not opposed to a reductive Cartesianism; rather, it
incorporates reductivism into a more subtle and complex set of relations. The difference
between the reductive tendencies of Cartesianism and the unfolding logic of Leibniz is
that reductivism is expedient and crude compared with the creative, vital elegance
of combinatorial multiplicity. There is really no fundamental difference between
a more or less spherical formation and a blob. The sphere and its provisional
symmetries are merely the index of a rather low level of interactions, where-
as the blob is an index of a high degree of information in the form of dif-
ferentiation between components in time. In this regard, even what seems
to be a sphere is actually a blob without influence: an inexact form that
merely masquerades as an exact form because it is isolated from adjacent
forces. Yet, blob that it is, the sphere is capable of fluid and continuous dif-

14.60 ferentiation based on interactions with neighboring forces with which it

can be either inflected or fused to form higher degrees of singularity and
multiplicity simultaneously. Complexity is always present
as potential in even the most simple or primitive forms. It is
measured, moreover, by the degree of both continuity and
difference copresent at any moment. This measure of com-
plexity (the index of which is continuity and differentiation)
might best be described as the degree to which a system
behaves as a blob.

IDofe ©©[JDSitlPQJKÄDD
In a September 1995 panel discussion at Columbia University orga-
nized in conjunction with the "Light Construction" exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art, a group of preeminent tectonic practitioners
once again argued that humans have always structured themselves as
"standing upright" and by extension, so should buildings. This fallacy that
buildings must stand erect is already discredited by 200 years of research
into theories of gravity. Any student of structural stability knows that structural
dynamics are far more complicated than the mere transmission of perpendicu-
lar loads down to the earth s surface and must consider the interaction of
multiple loadings that range from the perpendicular to the oblique. As
structural engineers have for centuries, architects might consider more
complex analogies of support than the simplistic, bankrupt, and
highly overrated notion that buildings should stand vertically. The
reason that architects retreat into this Cartesian model of simple
gravity is that it is expedient. Unlike structural engineers, architects
are expected to be simple, crude, and upright in their approach.

Stand-up architects, prescribing received models based

on disproven 17th-century ideas, have yet to encounter

the subtlety and complexity of blobs.

Many architects have begun to investigate the possibilities of topolog-
ical surface organizations as alternatives to Cartesian volumes. These explorations invite us to
consider a new morphological analog of the body more akin to a single-cell blob than a symmet-
rically articulated upright man. These investigations are not confined to surface organizations.
Mark Rakatansky's Adult Day Care Center (1990-92), for instance, uses a network of linear
handrail and frame elements that intervene and connect throughout an existing institutional build-
ing. This project is more akin to the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, 1978) (fig. 4) than to The Blob.
Like the Body Snatcher ovoid tubers that send proboscidal appendages into and around their victims,
Rakatansky's project is an inflected bundle of vegetal tubes that infiltrates and reconfigures its context.
Blob construction, it must be acknowledged, is only in its nascent stages of development in con-
temporary architecture culture. With few exceptions, the recent projects that make use of topological
surfaces do so for the development of complex roof forms, and roofs, however programmatically
complex, are still in the end just roofs. Many experiments in architecture begin with the problem of
the long-span roof, however, because it is there that form, structure, and tectonics are so intricately
entwined. Nonetheless, the roof projects do invite the reactionary (and perhaps overly hasty) responses
put forward by the editors of .Assemblage: Isn't this just the 1 960s all over again? Isn't this more
or less Buckminster Fuller redux?s Until blob organizations develop beyond the prototype
of the shed, they will remain open to such accusations.

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figs. 5,6 Alejandro Zaero-Polo
and Farshid Moussavi, Yokohama
Port Terminal, proposal, 1995.
fig. 7 Reiser + Umemoto,
Yokohama Port Terminal,
proposal, 1995.
fig. 8 Shoei Yoh, Odawara
Sports Complex, Odawara-Shi,
Japan, 1992, computer rendering,
figs. 9, 10 Shoei Yoh, Glass
Station, Oguni, Aso-Gun,
Kumamoto-prefecture, 1993.
fig. 11 Shoei Yoh, Uchino
Community Center, Uchino,
Japan, 1995.
What is interesting about these roof projects is that like any long-span project, the structure is an initial ques-
tion that must be asked in conjunction with questions of form. Therefore, tectonics and construction techniques
are developed simultaneously with formal diagrams. Consider last year s competition entries for the Yokohama
Port Terminal. Nearly all of the submissions rethink the 1 9th-century construction dilemma of the long-span
shed terminal with a new set of criteria: the program and occupation of its outer surface. A comparison of two
entries that experiment with flexible surface tectonics - the winning design by Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Farshid
Moussavi (figs. 5, 6) and the proposal by Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto (fig. 7) - reveals both the limita-
tions and the potential of blob forms as built forms. Zaera-Polo and Moussavi treat the flexible surfaces as slabs,
a precedent established by Rem Koolhaas in proposed designs for the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Jussieu
Library, and the Cardiff Bay Opera House. Unlike Koolhaas s library schemes, however, where programmatic
and social diversity align with the differential fluctuations and punctures in the flexing slabs, Zaera-Polo and
Moussavi s Yokohama Port Terminal adheres to the plan symmetry in the deployment of its spaces and the orga-
nization of the site. The combination of flexible slabs and symmetrical program deployment yields a globally
monolithic typology that is locally flexible in its transitions from slab to slab. The radical distinction, characteris-
tic of the Beaux- Arts style, between a mechanistically symmetrical plan and a more or less free section where
one could interchange between slabs limits the topological effects to sandwich deformations of roof, ceiling, or
floor. Reiser + Umemoto make use of a truss and joist system that provides a spatial thickness within the trusses
in addition to the undulating roof surface. Like Otto Wagner s Postal Bank, this project takes the 1 9th-century
roof typology of the station and programs the thickness of the truss. Reiser + Umemoto then extend this con-
cept by treating the roof structure as a volume that can be packed with program. The location of program in the
roof thickness, along with the variegated location of programs below, allows their project to deflect asymmetri-
cally across the site. The net result is a continuous surface that has both a changing thickness and a changing
height due to the various pressures of progams located within and below its surface.
Perhaps the most important investigations into the tectonics of topological
roof typologies in the past five years are those of Shoei Yoh. His Odawara
Sports Complex (fig. 8), Galaxy Toyama Gymnasium, Glass Station (figs. 9, 10),
Naiju Community Center and Nursery School, and Uchino Community Center
(fig. 11) all possess a highly differentiated globular singularity. The gymnasium
projects announce an emerging blob aesthetic that inventively responds to
shifts in the economics and construction techniques of the contemporary
building industry. These projects articulate an approach to standardization and
repetition that combines a generic system of construction with slight varia-
14.61
tions in every member. The projects make use of both prefabricated steel
components and site-fabricated bamboo and concrete. Through both manual
construction and industrial fabrication, the economies of what is often
referred to as "custom assembly-line production" is exploited.
The spatial theme evident in all of Yoh s recent work is the enclosure of
a diverse group of programs under a single roof. The conventional approach
to this problem would be to identify either a maximum or an
average span for a roof height that could then be used for the
entire structure. Rather than simplify the roof structure to an
ideal module that would be repeated identically, Yoh respects
the specificity of each program and develops a surface that
continuously connects across all of these heights like a wet
cloth. The structural members of this system are similar but
not identical. This strategy uses both generic and particular
approaches simultaneously. There is repetition, but each repe- &■
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tition of a homogeneous surface brings a slight fluctuation
or differentiation.
In this manner, Yoh s work subtly complicates the distinctions between a global system and local compo-
I
rtf
nents, between the general structure and particular variations and even between industrialized fabrication J
techniques and indigenous construction. The variations in the global form result from local variations in the 3
rö
program, and these variations are taken up in a repetitive construction technique in which every element is
slightly differentiated within a more or less continuous system. The forms are both continuous and heteroge-
neous in their shape and construction. They are intensively determined by slight variations in their context
yet alien in their continuity and connectivity. This multiplicity of minor variations does not add up to a sin-
J
0
gle, simple global structure but instead manifests a globular singularity, or, if you will, a blob.
M
i
1
teßg(gFD[p)i fö
Any discussion of flexible shell structures owes a debt to the innovative research of the recently deceased
Sir Edmund Happold. As the engineer for Frei Otto, Happold perfected the use of lattice shell structures. 1
Whereas Otto, a structural expressionist, generated rational forms out of monolithic constructional systems Z
Z
of blown or poured concrete, Happold introduced the use of assembled components and thus pioneered >-
_l
the use of standardized repetitive members joined differentially as a network. Despite the recent popularity (9
and widespread application of lattice shell systems, Happold s Mannheim Pavilion (1986) remains one of lil
OC
the most simple and elegant uses of the lattice shell. Admittedly, Happold s lattice shell systems are not a o
paradigm of structural efficiency and ideal form, but they do provide a model for flexibility and fluidity.
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