Why do curved buildings often fascinate us compared to the boxy volumes we see daily? A psychologist called Kate Gordon stated in 1909 that curved edges and surfaces are more graceful and flexible and, therefore, more beautiful than those with harsh straight lines. The theory was tested at the University of Toronto about a decade ago with the brain scans of participants when they were shown two types of these different environments. As a result, they overwhelmingly preferred curves over angular designs. The research explained this phenomenon as the familiarity effect that the perception is prone to prefer more used items to the other and nature merely consisting of organic curves develop acquaintance with us. Here are delicately picked and quite mesmerising ten pieces of architecture that skilfully use curvatures to create delightful atmospheres.
Heydar Aliyev Centre, Baku Azerbaijan, Zaha Hadid
Heydar Aliyev Cultural Centre is shown as one of the most influential structures in Azerbaijan and the world. It was designed by Zaha Hadid and built due to a competition held in 2007. In addition to its national importance, Heydar Aliyev Centre bears great significance for international architecture. As the most outstanding and significant piece of the deconstructivism movement, a postmodern fluid form remarks this distinctive design by Zaha Hadid. The right-angled edges of the building were dissolved into this organic form by playing with the surfaces. The continuity of this fluidity can be traced to the interior design of the building. Balconies are inspired by the rhythm of the music in the auditorium, enhancing the experience in the interior to keep up with the exterior.
Fluidity is the essential theme of Zaha Hadid’s peculiar style. Thanks to this understanding of fluidity and her futurist attributions, aesthetically pleasing details catch the eye of this building. Soft, smooth, curvilinear surfaces are obtained by shunning sharp edges and corners. The fluid skeleton of the exterior tiles shows itself in the building with gallery shafts. This fluidity in the structure confuses the perception of the building because the outer and inner shells are combined. At the same time, the fact that the interior does not have clear lines makes the ambience feels like an endless sea and pushes the limits of your imagination. Although there is some criticism about its ambiguity, this abstract piece of architecture is not unprecedented because it is equivocal. Consequently, Heydar Aliyev Centre has been celebrated for embodying different and modern touches since it was built.
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao Spain, Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry’s landmark completely changed the faith of this Spanish city. It brought the term “Bilbao effect” into our lives, perhaps of the most effective project of all times, proving how powerful architecture can be once again. The term called ‘Bilbao Effect’ is derived from this revolutionary museum. Bilbao is a little town located in the Basque region of Spain. After a long time of economic suffering until 1997, the city started to live its golden age in tourism thanks to the Guggenheim Museum. Frank Gehry, in this project, took an unprecedented stance, making the built environment look natural and organic. The Guggenheim Museum has established a strong relationship between the public spaces it creates and the surrounding urban fabric.
Pritzker-winner world-renowned architect Frank Gehry designed this deconstructive museum. Like Zaha Hadid’s masterpiece, Gehry’s Guggenheim pushes the limits of technology and spends a great effort on a perfect design. Rich use of materials was presented for multi-purpose. The curved titanium surfaces on the outside facade are designed to capture and diffuse the light. It allows the facade surface to oscillate the light in different colours. Therefore, these titanium surfaces create an excellent aesthetic perception and almost fade between the sea and sky.
Sage Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne UK, Norman Foster
Another prominent architect and designer, Norman Foster, designed the Sage building for music and performative arts in Gateshead, the UK. Foster’s design principles of flexibility and adaptability reflect this project and stand out. This art centre on the Southbank of River Tyne not only hosts occasional public events but also provides spaces for music education, two stages for performance and a beautiful café with a view towards the River Tyne and Tyne Bridge. Foster designed Sage as a hub for music events as well as public gatherings to increase the interaction between the people who would not normally use the building during any events are hold and the Quayside connecting Newcastle and Gateshead with stunning bridges. Foster chose an intriguingly organic shape complementing the built environment, most notably with the Millennium Bridge. This futuristic building expresses a blob form, described as a postmodern style called blobitecture. It is characterised by organic forms and shapes built in a free-flowing fashion.
Dancing House, Prague Czech Republic, Frank Gehry
The Dancing House, designed by Frank Gehry in the centre of Prague, was completed between 1992-1996. The building’s name refers to its resemblance to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ famous dance in the 1930s, making it an essential example of postmodern architecture. It was built in the place of a 19th-century Renaissance revivalist building demolished during World War II. Dutch ING Bank wanted to create a new iconic building in Prague, so Gehry worked on an unrestricted budget. Consequently, Gehry was able to realise his deconstructivist ideas with economic freedom.
The building consists of two bodies; the first hull is a glass tower supported by bevelled columns, and the second has a wavy structure that moves parallel to the river. This wavy shape is created with moulds, and the fact that the windows are not aligned linearly gives the building the effect of moving. There are cafes and shops on the ground level, directly connected by the river and the square in front of it. There are offices from the second floor to the seventh floor of the building. The top floor has a restaurant with panoramic views of the city.
Penguin Pool, London, UK.
Georgian-born architect Berthold Lubetkin built the penguin pool at the London Zoo in 1934. Although this influential building made it to the listing, it lasted only a short time for penguins since apparently concrete is harmful to their feet. Lubetkin wanted to make a sympathetic slate and rubber floor, but it was not accepted. This once-extraordinary design features two intervolving spiral concrete slides in the middle of an elliptical pool. Ove Arup, the era’s leading engineer and concrete specialist, assisted in realising this project. Lubetkin and his architectural office Tecton also passed the commission with the zoo’s other parts as Gorilla House. This simple form could be received not as extraordinary as the other projects but using reinforced concrete in a clean composition for a zoo section was an unexpected approach at the time.
Church of Cristo Obrero, Uruguay, Eladio Dieste
Church of Cristo Obrero was built by the engineer Eladio Dieste in a rural area 30 miles east of Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1959. Architectural Review magazine in 1961 edition describes the wavy facade wall of this structure as ‘emotional’. The wave, which takes many forms, visible and invisible, is undoubtedly related to our perception. The brick material, which is in the form of a rectangular prism, of the oldest building materials of humanity, has been tamed by Dieste to create these organic forms. The use of bricks is often poetic in architecture. In most of them, the verses are created with the texture and colour of this material, repetitions form the rhymes, and the harmony of the whole may create the poetry. However, in Dieste’s church, the mass is a complete poem.
The engineer used the vaults inspired by the Gaussian law of electric current in other works and in this structure. This double curved wave geometry, called Gaussian vaults, provides structural resistance with the power transferred by the material to each other. Dieste’s uniqueness is that he knitted these flattened structures with bricks. This engineer took his place in history, arguing that architects did not build structures but mounted different materials together. Throughout his career, he developed four different innovative techniques to produce forms and structures that resist gravity. This church in Atlantida is on the UNESCO world heritage list and protected with all its protectionist, engineering and design features.
As in the previous examples, the Sydney Opera House was built after winning a competition. Danish architect Joern Utzon’s iconic masterpiece in Sydney, was built in 1957. Utzon was inspired by birds’ wings, the shape and forms of clouds, seashells, walnut and palm trees, sails of yachts, and partly from the Mayan and Aztec temples in Mexico. While the Sydney Opera House, the roof structure was called ‘shells’, the most difficult part of building construction was the shells. Inspired by the peeling of the orange, Joern Utzon thought the 14 separate roofs of the peels would form a sphere when combined.
The design of the world-famous building dates back to 1956. The Government of New South Wales in Australia announced a competition for the design of two performance halls to be designed for concerts of opera and symphony orchestras in Sydney in 1956. Jørn Utzon, who participated in the competition with a few simple sketch drawings, was highly appreciated by the competition jury. Utzon’s design has been seen with the potential to become one of the largest buildings in the world, and the opera house concept has been recognised. Between 1957 and 1963, John Utzon, the architect of the structure, and Arup, who undertook the construction and engineering works of the building, worked together to develop a shell system that made the global shape of the structure structurally possible. After trying nearly 12 times, a ribbed precast concrete shell system consisting of sections of a sphere was created.
Niterói Contemporary Art Museum, Rio de Janeiro Brazil, Oscar Niemeyer
Niterói Museum of Contemporary Art was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and is described as one of Brazil’s most iconic structures. Located on the shore of Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay, this landmark is a crucial part of the city’s panoramic skyline. The museum’s modern and unusual architecture has also led to the analogy of design to certain objects. References to ‘tea plate’ and ‘UFO’ are made for the Niterói Museum of Contemporary Art worldwide. Oscar Niemeyer explains the extraordinary design of the Niterói Museum of Contemporary Art with the following words: “In an area surrounded by the sea, it was inevitable to use central support as a design solution. The architecture of the building emerged like a flower that emerged from the cliffs and held these cliffs.” It aims to create a design that comes out of the ground, grows, and disintegrates.
The Niterói Museum of Contemporary Art is an essential masterpiece with its architecture and engineering details. The circular body, with a total diameter of 50 metres and a width of 2000 square metres, is carried by a central cylinder support with a diameter of 2.7 metres. Designed as if hanging in the air, this structure is also very resistant to wind load with its aerodynamic design. The central hall, 462 square metres wide inside the museum, was solved without a column on the plan.
Guggenheim Museum, New York City USA, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright started designing the Guggenheim Museum in 1943, and it was completed in 1959, 6 months after Wright’s death. Considered one of New York’s most iconic buildings, the museum also draws attention as one of its designer’s longest-running projects. Frank Lloyd Wright preferred a style different from the usual rectangular and solid architecture of the Manhattan area, which made it possible to easily recognise the curved and organic architecture of the museum on the crowded streets of Manhattan.
The exterior of the Guggenheim Museum consists of white reinforced concrete cylinders that rise to the sky and curl. This twisting structure creates a unique ambience inside and outside the museum. It further implements an extensive following single space approach of its architect Wright on a continuous ground. In 1992, the annexe in Wright’s original design was built. Designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects Architecture Office, the building was built based on Wright’s original sketches.
Colosseum, Rome, Italy.
It is an oval-shaped amphitheatre in the city centre of Rome, not only the most magnificent of those ever built but is today the most famous of all Roman monuments in the world. The historical arena, selected as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World in 2007, is considered the symbol of Rome and is visited by 5 to 6 million tourists a year. The colosseum is an ellipse in the plan. The oval shape was traditional for Roman amphitheatres, fit well in any region and was suitable for dynamic performances.
The oval structure of the amphitheatre was shaped by the social strata of the era. The shape made it possible to place the audience according to their social status: ‘nobler’ people sat closer to the stage. At the same time, the emperor and his entourage were visible to visitors from all rows. The logistics solution used in the construction of the Colosseum has been so effective that it has been used to this day in the construction of large stadiums. 80 entrances are evenly distributed throughout the perimeter of the structure. This allows us to fill a large amphitheatre with a capacity of several thousand people in 8 minutes and empty it in 5 minutes.
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