Blobwall Pavilion - Grey Lynn Blobwall Pavilion is designed to be a modern wall system which is made from lightweight plastic with bright colours. Grey defined it as ‘a contemporary rusticated wall’. This project expresses Grey’s idea of the development and growth from the tradition as he extracted design ideas of ‘a mixture of the opulent and the base, the elegant and the rustic’ from Renaissance architecture (http://www.arcspace. com/exhibitions/blobwall/blobwall.html). The blob units which Grey defined as bricks are made from lightweight plastic and recyclable. The units are cut by robot for accuracy and are welded together during installation. Small lights are also installed in each unit and controlled by computers in night. This wall is obviously more interesting than the traditional masonry wall
because of its tri-lobed shape replaced the normal rectangular bricks, its rotated “brick” units, its bright attractive colour, its plastic material and its computer controlled lighting. However, there are also something else need to be concerned for this project. The whole wall is more like a children’s place, toys or the kind of house which we will see in science-fiction movies. The material of the wall is plastic which is lightweight. As a result, the natural loads, such as wind and snow loads, which can be carried by the wall is more limited. The strength of the wall is weaker than the normal brick wall. The gaps on the wall also weaken it as a good shelter. At this stage, I think the Blobwall is more like a sculpture or a test of a new wall system rather than a functional architecture.