Organic Forms in Architecture

Buildings have historically been seen as assemblages of modular parts. This approach was perhaps unavoidable when the majority of building materials were, by nature, modular. Even with the coming of the industrial era, when steel and concrete freed buildings’ exterior walls from their load-bearing role, this kit-of-parts mentality prevailed. Mid-century modernists experimented almost obsessively with ways to articulate a building’s skin using its bay size and the rhythm of its columns. Forays into Expressionism, which took advantage of more plastic materials and explored biomorphic forms, were widely dismissed as overly emotional–even fantastical–and rationalism prevailed.

Plastic materials in and of themselves may have failed to change the design landscape, but as strides in materials science are paired with developments in computer-aided design, the siren call of a more organic architectural vocabulary seems to have prevailed. Contemporary architectural expression is bound only by one remaining unchanged "part" within its kit … the human form.

Zaha Hadid Architects’ Riverside Museum of Transport and Travel

Bjarke Ingels Group's (BIG) TEK Center

Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health by Frank Gehry