Let's get one thing clear, however. Very few buildings are designed as figurative representations of animals, though they do exist, particularly at American amusement parks, where they love their duck-buildings and their elephant-buildings. America too has produced a number of designs, such as those by the architect and critic Michael Sorkin, which explore the shape of animals such as fish, sheep, dogs, frogs, turtles and so forth, with varying degrees of exactitude. This is Sorkin's reaction against the usual "isms" of architectural movements which he describes as "no more inherently meaningful than the snout of the family dog". And you would expect California to throw up a maverick architect such as Eugene Tsui who can design a house to look like a giant eye or a dragonfly. But then, you've also got a house in Surrey by architect Laurie Chetwood that is based on the form of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, so the Home Counties can take on the West Coast any day.

This zoomorphic architectural trend (to call it a movement would be going too far) is more usually a blend of naturally-inspired structure and allusive form. A building may remind you of something, consciously or subconsciously. It may have branching columns like trees, or be apparently poised for flight like a bird, or have a skin of overlapping scales like a bird or snake. And of course it might be shaped like a gherkin.

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