Animal Instinct

NEWS	PHOTOGALLERY

Shell-shaped museums, forest-like stations, exhibition spaces inspired by marine grottos, lamps inspired by bats, serpentine sofas… The perfect symbiosis between nature, design and architecture. Leaves, flowers, animals, fish have always fascinated architects and provided them with the inspiration for the forms of their creations.
A good example is American Frank Lloyd Wright who in the early part of the last century tested and drew up the principles of a style of architecture that he himself described as organic and inspired by natural materials and forms. One of his most stunning creations is the Solomon Guggenheim Museum in New York, which also happens to be one of the world’s most important contemporary art museums. It’s a unique piece of architecture, a slightly inclined spiral, a kind of shell which twists around an empty space. Visitors walk this spiral and enjoy a very different kind of contact with the art than in a traditional gallery. The space just evolves in a lovely continual flow rather than being chopped up into various square or rectangular rooms.
This organic approach to architecture has always been extremely successful critically, theoretically and practically. In fact, the whole “organic” trend (which might now be better referred to as bio-architecture, sustainable architecture or bioclimatic) continues to produce creations that have fantastic cultural and emotive impact. The work of Spanish architect/engineer Santiago Calatrava, for instance, is inspired by the forms and structures he sees from both the animal and plant kingdoms in nature. His design for the Milwaukee Museum in the States was clearly inspired by bony vertebrae while his Expo station in Lisbon feels like it’s immersed in a stand of trees. Calatrava’s works appeal to us because of the fact that they combine the natural with the technological, in fact.
Canadian Frank O. Gehry, on the other hand, is renowned for his organic, sculptural approach to design. He has created buildings with both sinuous and fragmented forms. He is also the pen behind the legendary Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, whose spaces are similar to a group of fish lying on the bank of a river. The interior is no less evocative and similar to the grottos carved out by the action of the seas. Gehry found inspiration once again in the animal world for his work on Barcelona’s Olympic Village for which he created an enormous fish-shaped architectural sculpture.

Italian architect and technology enthusiast Renzo Piano also has a weakness for nature. In fact, for the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia, he created a series of 10 egg-shaped “shells” whose eco-friendly wooden exterior rustles like the branches of a tree when the wind blows.
Nature has provided the inspiration for many design projects too with a high cultural or media impact. The appeal of a product often, in fact, has much to do with its symbolic references. Vico Magistretti designed the Chimera and Bruco lights while Cini Boeri penned the Duck lamp and the Serpent sofa, Marco Zanuso the Cricket telephone. None of these items is a realistic representation of the animal in question but they all borrow at least one of the animal’s significant characteristics: the attractive sinuous line of a duck’s beak, the flexibility of a snake, etc. There are plenty of animal references even in the field of automobile design too. Almost all BMW’s cars, for example, have a GPS antenna that looks very much like a shark’s fin. The Porsche Caiman has a low, sleek, powerful crocodile-like profile also. And then, of course, there is the legendary Volkswagen Beetle (Bug in the United States) and its contemporary counterpart the New Beetle, whose famous lines need no introduction.
Nature has proved a generous and virtually endless source of inspiration for architects and designers, providing the seed for many a brilliant idea. This is very much the case in yacht design as boats must really interact completely with their environment. For that reason, the naturalistic references have more than a hint of the marine animal in motion about them. It’s a kind of ancestral relationship between man and nature. The dream of fleeing from an animal or chasing it is proof of what’s going on in our subconscious,” says architect Stefano Righini who has designed the highly successful Azimut and Mangusta lines. “Natural references are an instinctive part of my designs. I find that if they’re in there, there’s more balance between the forms.” Thus the windows he designs curve like dolphins. “With the Azimut windows, the glass is metallic-look to reflect the exterior. When the boat is under way, the foam from the sea reflects in them and the whole craft looks like a darting fish. But other elements came to me spontaneously, such as the lid that transforms a window into an eye. It’s not merely a stylistic thing because as it opens, it also has a function.” In all of Righini’s boats, there are full volumes and forms towards the stern which seem to project the entire line of the boat forward exactly as the powerful muscles at the rear of many fast animals (such as horses) do.
Giovanni Zuccon has a plethora of yachts to his credit, including the Ferretti Group’s CRN line, and prefers references to the larger cetaceans. “If I make a reference to nature, particularly with regard to certain components of the navettas, I spontaneously end up drawing the fin of a whale as it dives. It just gives me a sense of softness that is typical of the sea,” confirmed the Roman architect. It’s there, in fact, on the fly of the CRN 43 where the base of the antenna mast and of the satellites really does look like the fin of a marine mammal. “I also think that the way navettas cut so sweetly through the sea is very similar to the slow way that whales come out of and dive back into the water.” So really there’s an animal instinct in everything.

Arch. Cecilia Avogardo and Désirée Sormani

(Yacht Design, n. 1/2008)

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