It is called "Zoomorphic". The museum bought the idea on the appealingly oddball proposition that it is "architecture meets stuffed animals". Actually, it's a simpler concept even than that. A lot of buildings these days draw their inspiration from nature. They look a bit like birds, whales, sea-sponges, armadillos, honeycombs, human vertebrae, amusingly-shaped vegetables, prawns, jellyfish, whatever. Thanks to modern technology, it is now possible to design and build buildings like this without anyone suggesting you should go away and have a little lie-down. That's what the show is about.
Some stuffed animals are there, however, carted over from the Natural History Museum across the road to act as mute commentary on all the models and drawings in the show - which in a further twist are exhibited in deliberately old-fashioned glass-sided display cases, exhumed from some museological basement. Thus presented, the buildings cannot help but take on some of the characteristics of the creatures so avidly collected by 19th century explorers. OK, so it's a slightly arch design concept, driven by a rock-bottom budget, but it just about works. As so often in such cases, the book is better than the show.
