ON THE SURFACE

CHRIS KABEL

ON THE SURFACE

CHRIS KABEL

ON THE SURFACE

CHRIS KABEL

MATT

Non-reflective finishes are back in vogue. What lies behind the shift to matt?

There is a wind of change blowing through the world of industrial varnish. It’s not a revolution, more of an evolu-tion. With mirror coats and hyper-gloss varnishes, indus-trial finishes have finally achieved an unsurpassed level of shine – at extremely low cost. So perhaps it’s no surprise that when nearly every product we see positively glares with brilliance, the tide is turning in the other direction. First it was cars, wrapped in matt black vinyl skins, rolling opaquely down the streets of big cities. Headphones and other electronic devices quickly followed suit. Now, lots of things that used to reflect light have started to absorb it instead. Suitcases, bicycle frames, magazine covers and furniture are all shedding their shiny skins. In fact, these days, it seems a matt finish is the belle of the ball. Its fragile and absorbent qualities lend its wearer a soft, tactile, almost surreal glow. Take, for example, Surrey Nanosystems’ ultra-black, ultra-matt Vantablack nano coating. A kind of paint, the nano coating uses molec-ular tubes of carbon, perpendicular to the surface, to let in light waves, then smother them. Not one photon can escape. It’s the colour version of the sound-absorbing anechoic chamber. Unfortunately, exclusive rights to its use have been granted to artist Anish Kapoor, who likens the visual effect to “looking into a black hole”. The fact that more people won’t be able to use it is a shame. Who wouldn’t have loved to play around with this blackest of black paint? The military’s preference for matt coatings dates to the beginning of the 20th century, when warfare changed its tactics and went undercover.

This publication is designed by OK-RM and illustrated with photographs by Casper Sejersen and is kindly supported by Interwoven.

Chris Kabel (1975) works from his studio in Rotterdam with cultural institutions, architects, design labels and galleries. He is editor at large for MacGuffin Magazine and teaches at ECAL in Lausanne. www.chriskabel.com

Designing the Surface exhibition on show until 20 August 2017Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdamwww.hetnieuweinstituut.com

The articles were originally published on Interwoven: The fabric of thingskvadratinterwoven.com

LIGHTNESS

The new stone age: how new techniques are transforming stone into a super-material

In a hidden valley in the Piemonte region of Italy, sur-rounded by monumental blocks of quarried rock, there is a stonemason that has perfected a remarkable technique. The technique, developed by the Taltos company, allows for room-sized blocks of marble, granite, onyx and other types of stone to be sliced into translucent, wafer-thin sheets of stone veneer and processed in ways that defy traditional ideas about natural stone as massive, solid and heavy matter.  Inside an inconspicuous factory building, a diamond- covered rope slices the stone blocks into fine sheets. At the bottom of each block, the rope stops. Here, the sheets remain connected to the bottom of the original block, held together as one piece. A little further on, the incised block is immersed in a kind of pressure cooker. This pressure cooker is the size of a swimming pool, and impregnates the stone with plastic resin. Thanks to the cooker’s vacuum force, this plastic resin spills into the sawn widths, defects and cavities in the stone. When the curing process is complete, the block is cut again. This time, the cuts are made in the same place as the previous cuts. Now, however, they slice all the way through the block. The results are millimetre-thin sheets of stone, reinforced with a backing of resin. Still quite fragile, the sheets are then reinforced by lami-nating woven glass-fibre webbing, sheet glass or aluminum honeycomb panels onto the resin-impregnated backs of the stone sheets.

Colourful and shiny apparel was exchanged for a stealth-led, camouflaged non-presence. From then on, all equip-ment was painted in dull and matt greens, browns and greys. Indeed, the quality of the matt paint of the US Army is so high that the American National Gallery of Art, after comparing it with commercially available paints, decided to use it for restoration works on outdoor statues by Alexander Calder and Tony Smith. But matt remains a tricky business. Matt coatings have more pigment than glossy ones; they stick through the resinous bonding agent and scatter the light rather than reflecting it. However, these grains are easily rubbed off, letting the shiny ghost out again. And in the end those matt car-wrap stickers are a masquerade, too –they cover a super-glossy top coat

– without that smooth top-coat the wrap wouldn't stick for long to the car body. We love matt for aesthetic reasons, too. Ungrounded, floating, like some kind of exotic extraterrestrial matter, matt objects exist, happily unaware and independent of the settings in which they are placed. The Germans would call them ‘Fremdkörper’ – their skin a cloak that denies context, sucking in the light, rather than bouncing it away. Matte’s blandness resonates with the ongoing normcore trend, whose adherents try not to stand out of the crowd but instead wear unpretentious plain clothing by main-stream brands – it’s not about bling, but blending. The hard sheen of polished objects that reflect light, repel dirt and resist touch is just too real and too present. On top of that, lately we’ve started to associate shine with the pseudo- confidence that financial institutions and the new rich want to imbue us with. So, we use matt as a material state-ment of civil disobedience, knowingly denying that in the end matt will turn shiny as well.

towards a new stone age, where ultra-light granite doors swing effortlessly open, and translucent window blinds infuse the incoming light with an amber glow. This new finish could pose serious competition for the wood veneer industry: will mid-century modern teak veneer (finally) be replaced by new-century stone veneer? Will Ikea consider reissuing its Lack furniture series, covered with stone veneer? Or rather multiple veneers: one side granite, another white marble with a top of trav-ertine so as not to suggest it is a table hewn out of a single piece of stone and thus celebrate the possibilities this tech-nique opens up. Veneers incorporating heating elements could make a stone bench feel as warm as if the sun had been shining on it the whole day. Like wood at the beginning of the 20th century, stone has finally been able to shed its weight, and thus transform into a super-material. The intrinsic properties of the mate-rial itself are modified by cutting away ‘dumb’ weight and replacing it with a ‘smart,’ lightweight structure of woven panels, attached with resin. The sky’s the limit – literally. On its website, Taltos even boasts that with its ultra-light-weight stone panels it supplies the aviation industry. While this might be good news for a handful of jet-owning oligarchs who want marble floors for their planes, most of us will be more interested with the everyday applications of lightweight stone. Now, a stone table might suddenly start to look less a tomb and more like a light and practical piece of furniture, fit for everyday use. And though weight might – for some – still imply a kind of luxury, most of us prefer to live – and build – lightly.

With extreme care, these sheets are finally stacked into piles – seemingly morphing back into their previous state as stone blocks. They then wait to be shipped all over the world. Unlike wood veneer, which has been embraced as a material thanks to the pioneering work of Alvar Aalto, Memphis and Ikea, the idea of a stone veneer still raises eyebrows. ‘One should not mess around with stone’ seems to be the thinking. Such an idea is understandable. After all, stone has been employed for millennia in solemn and serious contexts – as the material used to construct the likes of altars, temples and official buildings. Looks can deceive, however. While these edifices might appear solid, as if they were hewn out of entire blocks of marble, most are in fact constructed from brick and then covered with a marble topping. Thin translucent slices of alabaster, were used as early as 700 AC for the houses of affluent Yemenites to let the sun in, but keep the stranger’s gaze out. Later, churches in Spain, Italy and France copied this Arabian tradition, until stained-glass windows came into fashion. In the early 20th century, the architect Adolf Loos used the light that entered through small alabaster panels to cast an orange-yellow light over his pioneering American Bar in Vienna, with veins of crystalline occlusions creat-ing wonderful free flowing patterns. But as wonderfully and surprisingly decorative as these historic applications were, they were difficult to fabricate, as well as being heavy, expensive and rather small in size. Now, with this new smart-slicing process, a single sheet of onyx stone can cover an entire wall, from floor to ceiling, in one go. And if the ceiling and floor covering is included in this trickery, the space looks as if it has been directly dug out of an onyx quarry. This technique paves the way

with big brushes and large strokes, as the human eye was more easily deceived at such a distance. Furniture, on the other hand, demanded meticulous attention to detail. The craftsmen managed to suggest not just transparency, but even flaws – because natural materials are never a 100 per cent perfect. A perfect imitation requires mastery of the imperfections as well. Nowadays, this school of art has been almost completely lost, rendered obsolete by the ascendance of the white wall. But one bastion, at least, still stands: the Van der Kelen-Logelain institute in Brussels is one of the last refuges where these skills are still being taught, according to 19th century traditions. On an inconspicuous street in Saint-Gilles, at the rear of a medieval-looking house, in a wooden hall with large ceiling windows and no artificial light, a group of students are gathered together. They come from all kinds of back-grounds – including middle-class American girls, lost after graduating from art school, and a British house painter who wants to expand his palette. Under the strict super-vision of Madame Van der Kelen, an imposing matron with strong features and beliefs, these students stand in their white coats behind vertical easels. Here, they copy the sur-faces of little blocks of marble onto large pieces of paper, using the most fantastically formed brushes. They are learning the secrets of mimicry. Of course, these students are in a tiny minority. Comp-etition comes in the form of industrially photo-printed sheets of ultra-thin melamine, called infused paper. This paper is used to laminate contemporary surfaces – ranging from tabletops to tiles – with wood prints or repetitive marble squares. (Next time you’re in a hotel bathroom, take a closer look. You’ll be surprised to discover that the marble tiles in your hotel bathroom are actually all identical.

FAUX

Real or fake? Thoughts on the fine art of tricking the eye

In a centuries-old farm near Eindhoven in the Netherlands, there is a special floor. This floor seems to be covered with some kind of exotic kind of stone: wonderful blotted gradients of brown and yellow that look to be the work of millions of years of geological processes. But this floor is anything but a geological formation. Rather, it is the result of a manmade process: about a hundred years ago, a farmer and his wife painted the floor an ochre yellow and, after the paint had dried, added a layer of dark brown paint. This looked terrible, but they had plans. They sent in their kids, and asked them to play around in the room, on bare feet. These little feet pushed and mixed the differently coloured paints, creating a wonderfully irregular but consistent pattern of browns and yellows that could equal the most masterful painted faux marble altars in Southern Germany. At that time, this approach to simulating precious rock was by no means exceptional. In fact, all over Europe, marbling – applying faux bois, faux tissu and trompe l’oeil effects – had become de rigueur. Neoclassicism brought with it a high demand for marble pillars, tympana and the like, and there was simply not enough natural stone to go around. So, everywhere in Europe, schools popped up to teach the artful craft of mimicry. Before long, hundreds of artists were painting, daubing, blotting and veining inferior wood and plaster walls, turning their laborious efforts into luxurious stone and exotic wood. Each part of a building and furniture piece had its own technique. Ceilings were done quickly and roughly,

STEAM

In praise of the (un)intentional finish

Sometimes even a tacky 1980s rock song can lead to surprising design observations. Tina Turner’s cover of Tony Joe White’s ‘Steamy Windows’ describes two people making out on the backseat of a car on a parking lot. Their steamy interactions generate quite some humidity, which condenses on the car windows. This coating of tiny water droplets breaks the light that passes through the car win-dows and blurs the view of the lovers. Here passion creates a temporary privacy screen that gives the couple some intimacy. An unexpected scenario of cause and effect. A helping hand offered by a simple physical phenomenon: brought to you by means of a rock song cover. A little less practical, but beautiful nonetheless, is another phenomenon that can be seen in the medieval town of Erice in Italy. Perched on a 700-metre-high moun-tain peak overlooking Sicily’s west coast, Erice is a rather gloomy place. Unlike its surroundings, which bake in the Mediterranean sun for most of the year, the town receives an average of four days’ sunshine in a month; on other days it is shrouded in clouds that seem to be glued to the moun-tain top. Interestingly, the humidity from the clouds provides fertile ground for a living layer of lichen that covers every available surface of the small town. Stone walls and wooden doors, plastic plant pots and concrete public benches – every surface is covered with a fuzzy layer of grey-blueish-green algae and fungus patched by black circles. Yellow and orange dots that unify trash cans with church walls and lighting poles with asphalt. Walking around in this striking merger of the built and the natural, it feels as if the city itself, with its soft, pastel-coloured primordial skin, has become a living organism.

You’ll be reminded of a forest of identical trees, or a starry sky where all the stars are perfectly aligned into a grid.) As technology evolves, the artisans’ craft is endangered further. A new technique allows for objects to be covered almost seamlessly with any pattern imaginable. With ‘water transfer printing’, also known as ‘hydro dipping’, a photo printed on special, water-soluble foil is carefully placed on the flat surface of water, heated to 32°C. The water softens the foil and transforms it into a flexible, stretchable film. By means of an activator, this film is then made adhesive. When an object is now pushed under the water, it is com-pletely enveloped by the film, which sticks to the entire surface of the object. This new technique has been enthusiastically taken up by car tuners and game hunters. Car wheel rims, dashboards, gun stocks and motorcycle helmets can now easily and seamlessly be covered with ghostly skulls, camo and carbon patterns. Unfortunately, when it comes to patterns, the imagin -ation seems to stop there. And that is a terrible shame. In response to the abundance of photographic images that are now available for free through social media and the internet, photographers are looking to find new ways to regain control over their artistic content. As a result, photography is moving into ever more sculptural and three-dimensional territory. The photograph is torn, printed on different kinds of materials or suspended in artsy ways. It seems that the photograph is on its way to becoming an object. This blurry area, where image meets form, feels full of possibilities – and is worthy of investigation by designers. What better way to use water transfer printing than to cover objects with photos and search for new expressions and patterns that blur the boundary between image and form and extend the relation between an object and its decoration?

is polished into the wood, creating a deep black-brown, lustrous finish that preserves the wood and makes it water-repellent. Above arm’s reach, the soot continues to build up in a thick matt layer that works as a fire retardant. Until now the Chinese, who have always been masters in repurposing nature, have been the most successful in appropriating accidental coatings. Taking the pearl culti-vation industry one step further, they have found a way to place pre-shaped nuclei made from shell in oysters, which the oysters diligently cover with a layer of nacre. Until now their imagination hasn’t gone beyond Buddha and heart-shaped nuclei, but why not place a (wedding) ring, Montblanc fountain pen or Cartier watch dial in the shell?

Accidental finishes already provide inspiration for designers and artists. Inspired by the ‘weather’ marks that appear on a wet towel left in a plastic bag for too long, one of fashion designer Martin Margiela’s earliest works is a series of white dresses infused by bacteria and fungus, each garment displayed in a separate glass closet with a controlled atmosphere. Over time, the white cotton of the dresses became a breeding ground for the organisms that – even after their death – left their bright colours and growing patterns on the dresses. And Star Wars creator George Lucas started a small revolution by being the first director in Hollywood to add (or leave) dirt, soot and even scars from previous battles and meteorite collisions on his already iconic spacecraft creations. This layer of astro- patina gave his movies street – or rather space – cred. Cinema-goers recognised their own gritty surroundings in these stains and scars and were able to project them-selves more easily into the fictitious surroundings. How to embrace the accidental and the unintentional? What if we could organise accidents and natural processes in such a way that things we dislike become things we like? Could we colour and shape the salts that ooze from newly constructed brick buildings, or the algae that grow on concrete? Could we make patterns with patina? Could the accidental condensation on a window be controlled, and not only by having to make love (which wouldn’t be too bad, but a bit impractical), so that we can determine its position and transparency? Could, by means of static electricity, dust be repelled or attracted and organ-ised into patterns? Is the soot that comes from a fire beau-tiful or functional? In some traditional Japanese wooden houses, the open fire used for cooking and heating deposits soot on the wood walls and open roof construction. From the ground up, as far as the arm can reach, this soot

The entire Forbidden City seemed united by a polished, horizontal band of shininess. This band of shininess, strangely enough, completely erased the palace’s lustre, rendering China’s most prominent monument foul and greasy, not unlike a smudgy light switch in a public toilet. We are, however, hardwired to love lustre. Iridescent car bodies, advertisements for glossy lipstick in glossy magazines, the deep dark shine of the lifeless screens of electronic devices – a shine that is protected, in the packag-ing process, by a little piece of shiny cling-film – will always catch our gaze. It turns out that we are evolutionarily wired to be attracted to shiny things. Like the dragonflies, our eyes are very sensitive to glittering, brilliant, moving specks of light because these signal the presence of water. And so our glistening telephones, cars, jewellery, accesso-ries and the like fool us, just like the gravestones fool the dragonflies. And it seems we like to be fooled: advertise-ment agencies and designers tap into this rudimentary evolutionary (human) software glitch and present us with a cleaned-up, polished version of the world, where all surfaces shine. So the next time you see your phone lying on the table, and you are seduced by its dark, glistening surface, remind yourself: it’s the genes, stupid. Or rather, it’s the economics, stupid, since companies, it seems, have perfected a modern-day appeal to our prehistoric survival instincts.

SHINE

Lust for lustre: why we just can’t help being attracted to shiny things

A bright summer day at a small cemetery in Hungary. Hundreds of dragonflies are zooming through the air. The black, polished gravestones seem to have caught their attention: some dragonflies choose a particular stone and defend it as if it’s their own territory. They chase others away, and guard it, resting on a little perch. Some even try to lay their eggs on the brilliant stone surface. In fact, these gravestones are ecological traps: no egg can survive on these dry, barren surfaces. Biologists, puzzled by this self-destructive behaviour, finally discovered the reason for it: dragonflies confuse the polarised light bouncing off the shiny black surface with the light that is reflected by a body of water, and see the gravestones as little black ponds where they can lay their eggs and feed. So, they die because of a surface that is lustrous and shiny. ‘Shine’ is, first and foremost, a surface quality. Almost any material can be made shiny. Rub something long enough and it will shine. This became appallingly clear to me when I visited the (not so) Forbidden City in Beijing. After the pal-ace’s intense visual impressions had overwhelmed me, I was searching for a quiet place to rest in the shade of a nearby tree, and return to myself again. Then the bark of the tree caught my eye. It was completely shiny – but only at about arm’s height. When I looked further, I noticed that every surface on the imperial grounds, from the plaster walls to the stone statues, wood pillars and metal doorknobs, hinges and even nails, shone with unexpected brilliance: polished by the touch of millions of fingers that had caressed and investigated every surface they could reach.

After a few lively conversations on the benefits of wafer-thin stones, why dragonflies love cemeteries and retro-reflective reindeer antlers, Interwoven's editor in chief Anniina Koivu invited product designer Chris Kabel to write an article series on his wide-ranging collection of personal encounters with the finish and its applications, a subject Kabel investigated for his fellowship at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.  The resulting five articles were originally published on the website of Interwoven: the fabric of things (www.kvadratinterwoven.com) and have been printed on the occasion of the Thursday Night Live evening that focusses on the Designing the Surface exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut on March 23rd 2017. 

After a few lively conversations on the benefits of wafer-thin stones, why dragonflies love cemeteries and retro-reflective reindeer antlers, Interwoven's editor in chief Anniina Koivu invited product designer Chris Kabel to write an article series on his wide-ranging collection of personal encounters with the finish and its applications, a subject Kabel investigated for his fellowship at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.  The resulting five articles were originally published on the website of Interwoven: the fabric of things (www.kvadratinterwoven.com) and have been printed on the occasion of the Thursday Night Live evening that focusses on the Designing the Surface exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut on March 23rd 2017. 

After a few lively conversations on the benefits of wafer-thin stones, why dragonflies love cemeteries and retro-reflective reindeer antlers, Interwoven's editor in chief Anniina Koivu invited product designer Chris Kabel to write an article series on his wide-ranging collection of personal encounters with the finish and its applications, a subject Kabel investigated for his fellowship at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.  The resulting five articles were originally published on the website of Interwoven: the fabric of things (www.kvadratinterwoven.com) and have been printed on the occasion of the Thursday Night Live evening that focusses on the Designing the Surface exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut on March 23rd 2017.