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Key data

Architects: Cox Architecture with Architects 61
Location: Queen Elizabeth Walk, Esplanade Mall, Singapore
Consultant Team: Arup, Tierra Design, Landscape consultant, Davis Langdon
Cost At Completion Of Construction was SGD$82.900.000 (66,320,000 Million USD)
Construction By Sato Kogyo Pte Ltd
Project Completed 2010.

The Design Concept

The Helix bridge is a beautiful, lightweight stainless steel structure and is said to be the world’s first double helix curved bridge, whatever that means. The design was the winner in an international design completion held in 2006 and it beat 36 other designs.

A double helix is defined as ‘A pair of parallel helices intertwined about a common axis.’ The image in your mind should be the Watson and Crick’s 1953 sketch of DNA , that is a double helix.

Watson and Crick’s sketch of DNA, 1953, showing a double helix

The gently curving bridge links Marina Bay to the Marina Centre and is solely for pedestrians to use. The stainless steel structure is 280 metres long and weighs 650 tons. The bridge is actually sited above the Singapore River, rather than the sea. On an aside the bridge curves to the left, natural DNA curves to the right.

The design and the design process

The double helix walkway is an extremely complicated structure and had to be engineered and fabricated with very high degree of accuracy. The stainless steel bridge was designed by a consortium, including the Australian Architectural Practice, Cox and the engineering was designed by Arup. From Singapore the spectacularly talented Architects 61 were included in the architectural team as they had actually produced the original architectural design. The company also developed the Botanical Gardens, that structure makes it onto the list of the top ten attractions to visit in Singapore.

A pedestrian’s view of The Helix Bridge, photograph from The International Molybdenum Association and by Nicole Kinsman

I visited the bridge with my family in 2013. We walked over the bridge and took photos from the viewing platform along its length. The bridge is light and airy, no wobbling.

You get a killer view of the Marina Bay Sand casino and adjacent area. I mention this as Double Stone Steel supplied stainless steel for the casino project.

The Helix bridge is almost lost in the huge amounts of iconic landmarks in Singapore. The bridge unbelievably, does not feature on any top 10 sites to visit in Singapore. It is just a beautifully constructed, beautifully functional piece of engineering. It gets you from A to B with spectacular views on the way.

I come from a construction background, very high-end interior projects all over the world to be exact. Part of the construction process for a hotel project, is mock-ups. Mock-ups for all the furniture and mock-ups for all the room types, so not mood boards or looking at a couple of tiles. We would make full sized room simulations of how the room would actually be seen by the end users. Models can be a nightmare, all the designers, architects, owners and finally the hotel management have to sign them off.

The Helix Bridge at night, illuminated through the work of Technolite lighting designers. Photograph by Technolite

On the Helix Bridge project the engineers took mock-ups to another level by mocking up the entire bridge in mild steel. The whole bridge, not sections or joints or flanges, the whole structure was mocked up in the factory and then on the finished bridge every element was also fully assembled before being sent to the construction site. The mock-up alone took one year to complete. This complex process eliminated many potentially costly mistakes in the fabrication process.

The bridge was constructed out of grade 2205 Duplex Stainless steel. This grade of stainless steel was used for its combination of tensile (means you can pull or stretch it) strength. The 2205 stainless steel is also very good at resisting fatigue and corrodes evenly.

There are canopies within the inner spiral fabricated from fritted glass and perforated steel mesh. These are positioned to create shade for passers-through. On the exterior of the structure are illuminated letters c, g, a and t which represent the four bases of DNA (cytosine, guanine, adenine, thymine).

Which brings us back to the first point made in the article!

The Statue of Liberty, New York, United States

This enormous neo-classical statue is now a world-famous icon. It represents the very essence of the French People and the ideals at the center of American Constitution, Freedom & Liberty for all. The figure itself is based on Libertas, the Roman Goddess of Freedom.

The Statue of Liberty.

Conceived 1865 Glatigny, Near Versailles, France, completed in the USA October 28, 1886 at Ellis Island.

Structural Engineers Eugene Viollet-le-Duc (died 1879) and Gustave Eiffel 1832-1923
Plinth Designed by the Architect Richard Morris Hunt 1827-1895

Fredric Auguste Bartholdi and Gustave Eiffel

The Architect/Sculptor Fredric Auguste Bartholdi conceived the idea of the statue in 1865 after a dinner at the home of Edouard-Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye. The colossal statue was to be a gift from The French People to the people of the USA to celebrate the 100th anniversary of their independence from Great Britain. Or it could have been to celebrate the end of the American civil war or the end of slavery, no one is quite sure. It is certain however that the tablet held in her hand shows the date July 4th 1776, better known as Independence Day.

There was a problem though; no one had ever built anything on this scale since the bronze Colossus at Rhodes circa 280 BC. Bartholdi first appointed Eugene Viollet-le-Duc but, after a few years work, sadly Monsieur Viollet-le-Duc passed away.

Bartholdi then contacted an up-and-coming French structural engineer, a certain Gustave Eiffel. This was years before Eiffel’s second and perhaps even more iconic structure, The Eiffel Tower. Eiffel was chosen because of his understanding of wind forces.

The design of the 204-ton statue is shown in these contemporary photographs taken by Albert Fernique, which are in the New York Public Library, These photographs were taken in one of the many factories involved in producing the work of art and show the construction methods.

Photographs of the construction of The Statue of Liberty taken by Albert Fernique

Eiffel’s revolutionary structural design, which at the time would be the tallest cast iron structure ever built, was also one of the first examples of curtain walling ever produced. He used cast iron to construct an iron truss tower, from which he hung a secondary non-load bearing framework. This was a stroke of genius as the design allowed for the statue to be able to expand during the heat of summer and to contract during freezing winters.

This secondary skeleton was then clad in iron saddles, or iron bands, these bands were then insulated with asbestos, to prevent galvanic corrosion between the dissimilar metals and the hung with more than 300 individually hand beaten copper tiles.

The statue was completely assembled in Paris, dismantled and shipped to the USA.

The pedestal and Joseph Pulitzer

Originally the French were going to give the massive pedestal as part of the gift. However it was deemed too costly. The French raised the funds by lottery and public subscriptions.

The project was not instantly taken to heart by the American Government or indeed the American public. Funding was refused by congress for the plinth. Even at a state level funds were not forth coming.

Joseph Pulitzer to the rescue. He formed a fund-raising committee and made a promise to publish in print the name of every single citizen that contributed towards the project, in his newspapers no matter how small their contribution was. This caught the public’s imagination and the donations came flooding in. 120,000 donations were received by the committee of which more than 80% were in donations less than $1.00. The plinth was very much funded by the poor. I think the ideals the statue stood for must have resonated with the underclass.

The concrete plinth itself, which was designed by the noted American Architect Richard Morris Hunt, The Plinth was at the time the largest concrete structure ever poured. Hunt donated his fee to the project.

The statue’s copper plates would have been a shiny surface until the protective green patina formed. If our beautiful copper-colored PVD had been available, it would still appear as was intended, a beautiful, bright, welcoming copper giant that would sparkle in the sun and moonlight.

Liberty Enlightening The World in its natural copper color

The completed St Louis Arch standing in the unfinished Arch Grounds in the 1960’s

Picture taken from the air on December 10th 1967 by Reynold Ferguson

Eero Saarinen and the design of the Arch

The Gateway Arch, located at Memorial Drive, St Louis, Missouri was designed by the Finnish/American architect and industrial designer Eero Saarinen (born August 20th, 1910 in Kirkkonummi, Finland, died September 1st 1961, Ann Arbor, Michigan) and the American/German structural Engineer, Hannskarl Bandel (born May 3rd 1925 Dessau, Germany, died December 29th, 1993 Aspen, Colorado) the arch is also known as the St Louis Arch.

The Gateway Arch, St Louis, Missouri, USA

The Gateway arch is built in the form of a flattened catenary arch. A catenary arch simply being the shape formed by a chain or cable suspended between two fixed points. The diagram below actually show a catenary curve.

Diagram to show Catenary Arch by Larry Phillips of mathThoughts

The cost and construction for the project

The project had been discussed on and off since the 1930’s, mainly as a way of starting new jobs during the economic disaster that was the great depression. 5000 new jobs was the predicted number in all the forecasts, in reality the project only created 100 new jobs in total.

The Gateway Arch, St Louis, under construction in 1965 showing triangular cross section

Photo St Louis History Museum

Construction finally started in 1963 on February 12th and finished on October 28th 1965. The total cost in 1965 of the Gateway Arch was 13 million USD, which is around 93-94 million USD today. The Arch cost 11 million USD with 2 Million bidding allowed for the transport system inside the arch. MacDonald Construction Co. of St Louis was awarded the contract for construction as the lowest bidder.

There are, today, three ways of scaling the interior of the Arch, there are two sets of emergency stairs, one in each leg and consisting of 1076 steps per staircase. There is an elevator that can accommodate twelve passengers and there is also a tram in each leg of the arch.

Interior of the arch showing the Observation platform stop off the Gateway arch north tram. St. Louis, MO, USA

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association, JNEMA

The non-profit making organisation Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association JNEMA—pronounced “Jenny May” – was set up in 1933 with the following remit:-

“A suitable and permanent public memorial to the men who made possible the western territorial expansion of the United States, particularly President Jefferson, his aides Livingston and Monroe, the great explorers, Lewis and Clark, and the hardy hunters, trappers, frontiersmen and pioneers who contributed to the territorial expansion and development of these United States, and thereby to bring before the public of this and future generations the history of our development and induce familiarity with the patriotic accomplishments of these great builders of our country.”

Built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States, the Gateway Arch is the centrepiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and has become the internationally famous iconic symbol of St. Louis.

Materials

The Gateway Arch is huge, just massive. It stands at 192 meters high, which makes it both the tallest arch ever built and the tallest monument built by the United States of America. The arch’s width is the same 192 meters as its span. The Gateway Arch is the largest stainless steel building in the world.

The Gateway Arch is fabricated from 6.3mm thick grade 304 stainless steel, which shows just how durable 304 can be. People often only specify 316 for outdoor projects thinking 304 unsuitable. The stainless steel is finished in No. 3 Finish – this finish is obtained with a ground unidirectional 80 to 100–grit abrasive. It is sometimes an intermediate step for finer finishes.

The stainless steel covering the arch weighs 804 tons, which is also the largest amount of stainless steel used in a single project.

Photograph from below the St Louis Arch.

Thoughts of the experts

Peter Kaster — History Professor, Washington University in St. Louis
“The Gate Way arch was pretty well received at the time of construction. People actually had the ‘Go West, young man’ mentality and the Arch encouraged this movement”

William Gass — Author, Philosopher
“A lot of the people who did this had never had much of a chance before.”

Robert Duffy — Architecture Critic, St. Louis Post Dispatch
“You see in their faces a sense of hard work but also a certain sense of victory. They have accomplished something, they have moved on, they’ve gone someplace that no one has ever been before.”

Background

Joana Vasconcelos was born in Paris in 1971. She lives and works in Lisbon. Joana has exhibited regularly since the mid-1990s. She works in many media types including traditional crochet, wrought iron and polished stainless steel.

Highlights

After her participation in the 51st International Art Exhibition– la Biennale di Venezia in 2005, Joana’s work became known and respected internationally.

Recent highlights of her career include:

Trafaria Praia, project for the Pavilion of Portugal at the 55th International Art Exhibition– la Biennale di Venezia (2013);
A solo exhibition at the Château de Versailles, France (2012);
Participation in the group exhibition ‘The World Belongs to You’ at the Palazzo Grassi/François Pinault Foundation, Venice (2011);
and her first retrospective, held at the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon (2010).

Vasconcelos has had solo exhibitions and projects including those at the Manchester Art Gallery (2014); the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2013) and Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisbon (2013).

Pavillon de Thé, 2012 by Joana Vasconcelos

Pavilion de Thé

Pavilion de Thé consists of an enormous but very delicate metal structure in traditional wrought iron – a teapot -covered and decorated with vegetation – jasmine leaves to be exact. My favorite tea! The piece imposes a monumental presence, capturing the attention of the audience. In the iron bars that give the teapot its form, Joana has used the influences of many distinctive patterns of traditional fence and balustrades designs which can be seen throughout different city and rural landscapes around Europe.

The object takes the form of a veritable arbor-sculpture, these are sculptures are usually formed using topiary. The work shows an idealized combination of the natural world and the encroaching industrial world.

The wrought iron is used as an architectural element, which is both functional and highly decorative. The wrought iron give the piece its form, the form give the piece its beauty.

Jasmine is well known as the plant whose delicately scented flowers are commonly used to scent green tea, highlights the connection between the object and the custom of tea drinking.

In this respect, let us mention the subtle historical allusion present in the piece that highlights the leading role taken on by the Portuguese in the introduction of tea into Europe.

European habits of consumption after their arrival in the East, having brought back to Portugal shiploads of tea which would then be exported to several European ports; or the example of Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705), Portuguese Infanta and Queen Consort of England and Scotland, to whom is also attributed the role of having introduced the custom of drinking tea into the English court.

Assertive historical and cultural references and allusions to the urban, rural, domestic and public reality work together in a strategy of appropriation, de-contextualization and subversion of banality, transporting the spectator to a universe that challenges the programmed routines of the quotidian; a strange and simultaneously familiar world.

Marilyn

Marilyn by Joana Vasconcelos, 2009
Polished Stainless steel pans and lids, concrete, 270 x 150 x 430 cm
Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul
Work produced with the support of Silampos

Marilyn takes the form of an elegant pair of high-heeled strapless shoes. The sculpture is formed from stainless steel saucepans and their lids.

Positioned almost symmetrically, the pair refers to Marilyn Monroe’s absent figure. The unlikely yet assertive association between the saucepans and high-heeled shoes which are symbols of Woman’s private and public spheres.

By inverting the symbolism of female domesticity with female romanticism Vasconcelos is making a deeply ironic and satirical statement on the lives of women today.

The piece is meant to represent the outmoded and clichéd role of the domestic and romantic side of woman’s daily life.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – life and reputation

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a was a German-American architect and designer born on the 27th March 1886 in the German town of Aachen. Mies passed away in Chicago on the 17th August 1969 aged 83 years old.

Mies’ father owned his own business in Aachen, he was a stone mason and this is where Mies went to work before he moved to Berlin. He is commonly referred to and was addressed simply as Mies. Along with Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, and Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies is widely regarded as one of the select group of pioneering masters of modern architecture, a true visionary.

Mies talent was broad, he had the ability to design products ranging from, cutting-edge buildings and modern furniture and even type fonts location is self explanatory.

Mies’ furniture

My favourite designs by Mies are his furniture pieces, his chairs in particular are so elegant and simple. They were the very essence of modern design in the 1920’ and 1930’s Europe even today their classic design is suitable for any modern interior.

The ‘Tugendhat’ chair below, was sold at Christie’s in June 2011 for an astonishing 116,000 USD. The chair was designed in 1929 for the Villa Tugendhat, which Mies designed for the Czechoslovakian Industrialist Fritz Tugendhat and his wife Grete. The chairs was manufactured by the Berlin master metal worker Josef Muller.

The Tugendhat chair by Mies

Mies’ philosophy and the Barcelona Chair

Mies had a phrase he loved, ‘skin and bones’ he meant by this that simple was best. This chair realises his philosophy perfectly, the flat bar stainless steel is the bones and the rubber bands are the skin. Less is more. This was an extremely popular and important idea at the time, one only has to think of Naum Gabo’s Constructed Head No. 2.

Then we come to the piece of furniture Mies is best known for the Barcelona Chair and Stool which Mies designed in 1929. Originally the piece was designed to furnish the German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exhibition in Barcelona. The Barcelona Chair and Stool have come to epitomise modern design and design clarity. Mies designed the Chair to serve as seating for the king and queen of Spain, while the Stool was intended to accommodate their attendants. Mies had designed a modern throne. He had removed the gold and jewels and the sheer massiveness of traditional thrones and replaced them with a light chromed steel and leather structure. The product was manufactured to the very highest standards. I am not sure that the king and queen had ever seen a chair designed along these lines, let alone sat on one.

The chair suited the prevailing mood and is still does. The chair was redesigned in the 1950’s in order to utilise stainless steel.

The Barcelona Chair grouped

The Barcelona chair today

As a testimony to Mies’ skilled design, the chair has never been out of production, it is made around the world by many companies, some are very well made, some just cheap shabby copies. The chair is still produced by Knoll to Mies’s original and exacting specifications of the designer. The Barcelona’s cushions – welting and buttons included – come from a single cowhide and are supported by cowhide belting straps, dyed to match the color of the chair. To create the deep, precise tufting, individual panels of leather are cut, hand welted and hand tufted. The chromed-steel frame is stamped with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s signature. Manufactured by Knoll according to the original and exacting specifications of the designer.

The Barcelona Chair and stool are meant to be used in pairs.

The early example below sold for 93,948 USD in May 1999. The chair was manufactured by Bamberg Metallwerkstätten Berlin, circa 1931. I love it.

Barcelona chair 1931, manufactured by Bamberg Metallwerkstätten Berlin

Robert Bruno and his house of welded steel

Texas gives the world lots of strange and interesting facts. More wool comes from the state of Texas than any other state in the United States, the first word ever spoken from the moon by a human being was ‘Houston’, and the world’s first rodeo was held in Pecos on July 4, 1883.

Texas is a tough landscape filled with tough, hardworking and independent people.Texans are famous for being tough and in Texas and that seems to go for their artists as well. Take Robert Bruno for example, at the age of 29 he started on a large scale project. I wonder if he knew on the day he started, just how all-consuming this project would become. I wonder if it ever entered his mind he had just started his own magnum opus.

Robert Bruno’s house of welded steel, Texas

Robert Bruno’s house of welded steel was originally conceived to be a large scale steel sculpture. Then is was decided by Robert to make it into a single story house, then…well then, Robert Bruno spent the next 33 years of his life designing, with an absolutely meticulous determination and care, the huge, 110 ton steel structure that became known as ‘The Steel House.’ Robert built the house himself. He did not build it to build a house, he built it because he loved working in steel, he loved creating sculpture.

The house, which can be found close to Lubbock, Texas, is actually build on the side of a canyon, is not a huge house, it has an area of around 2700 square feet or around 250 square meters.

For the love of steel

The artist never really explained where his influences came from, he never tried to justify his work, he just want to form these shapes out of steel, so he did. The building/structure does not seem to have any concept. Some people see a resemblance to cars from the 50’s some people see insect carapaces, others see a home that would be quite happy on a canyon site on Mars. The house to me, is more or less a thought experiment in free accusation. A very rare, very solid object in a field that normally only takes place in thought.

I understand that before the steel house, Robert was working on steel sculptures of quite large scale. He finished one he could stand under and he liked the feel of being there. That was the seed for his steel house structure.

An architectural sculptor and an organic structure

Robert Bruno was an artist, not a conceptual artist, he is quoted as saying,

“This house doesn’t deal with concept at all,” he says. “I’m not trying to have something re-emerge in the guise of my house.” The house hitches itself to no stylistic wagons and has been spontaneously designed and revised over the course of its 33-year construction. “What you’re seeing is 33 years of design, not three months of design and 33 years of labour.”

Robert considered himself to be an architectural sculptor and artist. He made the actual shell or skin of the building, the structural component. Nothing was formed over beam or used as cladding. The skin of the house, is the house.

The vast majority of steel panels or elements were cut and welded on site.

“A lot of the shapes are helped along by the material itself, saying, ‘This is what comes naturally,’” he says.’

Naturally, it seems, Bruno’s house wants to express itself organically, even despite steel’s reputation as a primary tool in humankind’s arsenal of the artificial environment. Its pleasingly brusque, ruddy- brown color is only the result of rust and decay and to be honest, quite trendy, now know as a cor-ten finish.

I have found it extremely difficult to find any information on the actual construction of the house. I can not find out if the house is insulated. I imagine it must be because Texas is searingly hot. I can’t see any air conditioning or any services entering or leaving the building. I know that the house is made mainly from quarter inch steel plate or 6mm. The steel that the structure built from was bought as scrap so the house was not too expensive. I can not see electrical outlets etc.

Robert lived in the house for for a few months in 2008, just a short time before he died from cancer. I am not sure if the house was completely finished or even if it ever needed to be finished. I can not find other examples of Robert’s work.

Inside Robert Bruno’s steel house

Metallurgy graduate turned sculptor

Canadian Kevin Stone uses stainless steel to turn fantasy into stunning reality. He is one of Canada’s most promising new artists and is attracting international attention for the massive, visionary sculptures of fantasy figures he crafts out of 316L stainless steel.

As a metallurgy graduate, Stone honed his craft as a specialty metal fabricator over 18 years . In 2005, at the age of 35, he decided to combine his years of welding experience with a lifelong passion for fantasy art by making his living entirely from his artwork, a bold step for any one to take.

Head of Kevin Stone’s Chinese Imperial Water Dragon Stainless Steel sculpture

Why stainless steel?

Stone constructs his pieces from hundreds of highly reflective stainless steel components which he has patiently designed and fabricated. His pieces are enormous in scale and produce a striking interplay of reflected light wherever they are placed. This is a property of stainless steel that I personally love. Kevin use stainless steel to give his pieces durability.

Stone prefers to work with a durable material like stainless as it allows him to produce pieces of timeless quality while still capturing fine details and realism. Stainless steel gives him the ability to give a factory finish.

“A lot of my work as a professional welder was with stainless steel, polishing welds, grinding welds, bending, and so on. The corrosion-resistance of stainless is important to me. I need to know that my pieces can handle the elements, and they can. I need to know that my pieces can handle the elements, and they can. They’ll last for a hundred or more years, that’s how corrosion-resistant stainless steel is.”

Stone capitalises on the reflective qualities of stainless steel by mirror-polishing all his pieces by hand. This is a time consuming and expensive process but the end results speak for themselves.

“The polishing is crucial because ideally my pieces will be displayed over water with different- colored lights dancing off of them . They look especially striking at night in a fountain environment. I tend to envision them either indoors or outdoors in a Las Vegas type setting .”

The Chinese Imperial Water Dragon

Stone’s newest creation, The Chinese Imperial Water Dragon, came to life in his Metal Animation studio in southern British Columbia. It stands 4.2 metres tall with a width and length of 10 .5 metres. The sculpture is comprised of roughly 324 square meters of 316L stainless steel and valued at 10 million USD. It took more than 12,000 hours to create the dragon. The project never sold and the artist would take 5 million USD if he was offered it.

The Chinese Imperial Water Dragon sculpture

The sculpting process and the pitfalls to avoid

The projects are labour intensive and require a very high skill level.

All of the pieces in Stone’s sculptures are cut by hand using a power shear or a grinder with a cutoff wheel, then carefully fit and tack welded into place using a gas tungsten arc welding machine. After all the welding is completed, he grinds down the welds and starts the multi- step process of polishing the metal with finer and finer grit polishing pads, ultimately resulting in a gorgeous mirror finish.

“Thin stainless is tricky to weld, you have to take care to avoid overheating and burning through it,” Stone says . “It also requires polishing to bring out its beauty, which is labour intensive but the effort is worthwhile because, once polished, the pieces are ready for the outdoor elements: they won’t corrode, rust or lose their mirror-like quality for many, many years, conceivably hundreds of years.”

Kevin adds, that since stainless steel is a much better insulator than carbon steel used by most welders, maintaining a low heat input when welding is critical, it is easy to blue the surface.

Stone has no intention of slowing down. In fact he hopes to build a bigger studio to house his creations – one large enough for an overhead crane.

“I’m just a new artist on the scene trying to make a name for himself. Doing the largest stainless steel pieces in the world and doing them on a highly detailed level is something I hope to be known for.”

Frank Gehry’s first skyscraper, the 76-story New York by Gehry, with its rippling stainless steel cladding curved to look like draped fabric

What is Stainless Steel, or inox, cladding? Simply put, stainless steel cladding performs exactly the same function as most other types of cladding. This is to protect the inside or the outside of a building but stainless steel has the added advantage of being extremely attractive. There are many types of metal cladding available – stainless steel, copper, and aluminium, for example, along with many other types of non-metal cladding materials like wood, concrete, stone, brick and tile.

These other various cladding materials may be better suited to certain functions and applications. Stainless steel cladding, however, is a very high-quality, durable choice that literally outshines other cladding materials in many ways not least that is contains 60% recycled steel and is, at the end of its life cycle, 100 percent recyclable. Another benefit of stainless steel brings to a project is that it uses significantly less energy in it’s production. Aluminium production in the USA uses 4 percent of all energy produced in the USA.

There are various types of stainless steel cladding produced around the world, these cladding types include profile sheeting, composite paneling, and cassette paneling and now with Double Stone Steel’s PVD process, colored stainless steel cladding is possible.

Stainless steel and aluminium wall cladding by Forms + Surfaces. Phoenix Sky Train, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, Arizona

When used for in construction applications, the cladding can add structural strength, if the design team want or require. While the other material might be selected for other important functions such as thermal or electrical conductivity. Stainless steel cladding can be produced in trays, panels and strips. Stainless steel can be formed or drawn into 3D shapes.

Stainless Steel’s Applications and Benefits

Why should you choose stainless steel over other cladding materials? There are many reasons that stainless steel is a great choice, although of course ultimately it does depend on whether the material is suited to your application and your client’s budget, Here are some of the reasons why stainless steel cladding is becoming a more viable and popular choice amongst architects, designers.

Stainless Steel’s Durability and Technical Properties

Stainless steel is composed of at least 10.5% as a minimum to a more typical 25% chromium (Cr) and Nickel (Ni) and more than 50% iron (Fe). While stainless steel is not strictly “stainless”, it is one of the alloys available that is very highly resistant to corrosion, stains and rust. Stainless steel has a type of “self-healing” property for instance if the stainless steel surface is scratched, the chromium-rich oxide layer on its surface simply repairs itself. The presence of oxygen is needed for this oxidisation process to take place. This means that scratches will be visible but they will not rust. You do have to consider the grade of stainless steel that is specified. 304 or 316 are ideal for outdoor use, while 201 stainless steel is not suitable at all.

Although stainless steel cladding costs a little more than other types of metal cladding such as aluminium and regular steel, the investment is well worth it. Stainless steel is so much more durable and resistant to environmental factors; its polish and shine can easily be maintained for decades. It will not be eaten away by rust, or change color like copper is prone to do. It can be vandal-proof if the surface is finished in the correct manner. Double Stone Steel can provide PVD coated copper or copper color stainless steel cladding, profile or sheet materials.

Stainless Steel’s Architectural and Aesthetic Benefits

Stainless steel wall cladding is one of the most common uses for this material. Stainless steel wall cladding may be used both on the exterior and interior of buildings, creating a striking architectural effect. Besides walls, stainless steel’s architectural uses include railings, door cladding, panelling, framing, and roof cladding. We have recently supplied 8000m2 to a large roof project in Saudi Arabia. Stainless steel is an incredibly versatile material, and can be fabricated to fit basically any shape, with a variety of possible textured or etched surfaces.

Double Stone Steel’s stainless steel PVD colored cladding can help designers and architects to create a range of styles that are particularly clean and contemporary. Stainless steel has been embraced by the industrial, minimalistic styles that are so popular around the world, from bridges to sculpture and everything in between stainless steel reigns supreme.

Stainless steel can also be used to highlight or complement more traditional looks, or to create an eclectic blend of classic and modern. Stainless Steel wall cladding can be easily installed over many other materials, such as stucco, brick, concrete, or cinder blocks. Whether you need wall cladding, or any other architectural component to improve or modify your home, office, or workplace, stainless steel is an option that deserves your consideration. PVD colored stainless steel is adding an amazing new decorative scope for architects and interior designers.

Stainless Steel is Hygienic and Easy to Maintenance

Why is stainless steel cladding the top choice for commercial kitchens, hospitals, industrial appliances, custom shop fixtures, cold storage facilities, and other facilities that depend on a clean, germ-free environment?

One reason is that stainless steel is extremely easy to clean, maintain, and sanitise. The passive oxidised film that coats stainless steel renders it completely non-porous, and it simply does not compare to other cheaper metal choices. Stainless steel will give years of service.

No matter whether you run a food manufacturing plant, or a hospital if you need top-quality, hygienic surfaces that require almost zero maintenance, stainless steel is the very best solution available today.

Commercial kitchen with extensive use of stainless steel for surfaces and units

Gateshead Millenium Bridge in steel. Designed by Wilkinson Eyre architects and Gifford Engineers

Constructivism and the Pevsner brothers

The term ‘Constructivism’ was first used by the Russian sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo. Naum Gabo was actually the younger brother of Antoine, he changed his name to avoid confusion with his brother. Constructivism is an artistic, architectural and design philosophy that originated in Russia some time around 1919. The brothers Pevsner were true pioneers in this movement.

Naum Gabo and his brother, Antoine Pevsner

Naum Gabo, who was one of three brothers, was born Naum Neemia Pevsner, in the industrial city of Briansk on the 5th August 1890 and died 23rd August 1977, His elder brother Antoine was born on 18th January 1886 in the small Belarus town of Orel, Antoine passed away in Paris on the 12th April 1962.

Facade Design for A museum by Antoine Pevsner 1943-1944

Steel sculpture for the Bijenkorf Building in Rotterdam

Constructivism is a rejection of the idea of art for art’s sake or art for profit. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th century, influencing major trends such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements. Its influence is still pervasive, with major impacts upon architecture, graphic and industrial design. Gabo trained as an engineer before taking up art.

Gabo’s life and work

Gabo exhibited widely in the USA and Europe, and he lectured at Yale And Harvard. Gabo took American citizenship in 1952. He taught at Harvard University Graduate School of Architecture (1953-54) and delivered the A.W. Mellon Lectures in 1959 in Washington DC.

Gabo completed a number of large, private commissions, including a 25 metre high free-standing steel sculpture for the Bijenkorf Building in Rotterdam. The Thing, as it usually called, is the largest constructivist piece of art in the world. It was made in a factory in Holland in 1957 . The sculpture depicts “a metal latch to close the life of a city”.

Gabo was a sculptor that played with mass and line. He wanted to produce large scale artworks using the smallest amount of materials available. I think that this was in part due to the fact that Gabo’s early pieces were constructed during times of revolution or war, materials were very scarce, metal was valuable and needed for the various war efforts going on around him. Gabo once said “We take four planes and we construct with them the same volume as four tons of mass.” He was amongst the first artists to use semi-transparent materials.

The Constructed Head No.2

Gabo felt his Constructed Head No. 2 sculpture which he created in 1916 (pictured below), was his first masterpiece and the critics of the time agreed. The piece below is actually an enlarged copy to be found at the Tate Gallery, London.

The Constructed Head no 2, enlarged copy in The Tate Gallery, London

The Constructed Head No. 2 was made from galvanised iron sheet or as the artist referred to the iron,’planes’ and was painted yellow ochre. Various copies where made in plastic and weathering steel. We would call this finish today, corten.

The piece below was made in 1977 for the excellent Nasher Sculpture Centre, in Dallas which was produced using stainless steel in 1975 and measures 70 x 54.25 x 48 in.

When viewed from either side, the figure appears to be slightly slouched and gazing downwards, almost in a prayer- like thoughtful attitude. From the front the figure’s posture and gaze take on an entirely different air, and it appears to be confronting the viewer almost like it is asking the viewer a question or waiting for an answer.

The Constructed Head No 2, 1916. Nasher Sculpture Centre, in Dallas

Model for a Construction in Space, 1966

Lots of Gabo’s sculpture were very small scale pieces but in his mind’s eye they were depicting large scale public buildings and engineering projects.

My own personal favourite of these is the beautifully made ‘ Model for a Construction in Space.’ Which was made in 1966 out of plastic and nylon thread It does not tell you where the space is, it could be in the sea or the atmosphere. The piece when it is on display is suspended from the ceiling or some other overhead point.

The piece does depict an object/building/space station that contains huge mass but as Gabo wanted the mass is produced from nothing more than clear plastic and the lines of transparent nylon. In my mind I can see the piece at a massive scale orbiting a far off planet.

This is in the Tate Gallery in London but unfortunately it is not on display at the moment.

Model for a Construction in Space, 1966

The Wassily Chair by Marcel Breuer.
Originally know as Chair Model B3, Club Chair
Nickel Plated Seamless Steel Tubing and Sprung Canvas

Marcel Breuer’s career and reputation

Marcel Breuer was born in Pécs, Hungary in 1902 and passed away in New York USA in 1981. Breuer graduated from The Bauhaus in 1924. The name Bauhaus literally translates to ‘house of construction’ but was understood as meaning ‘School of Building’.

Breuer taught at the Bauhaus in Dessau until 1928 and practiced architecture in Berlin for three years afterwards. After working for one year in London with F. R. S. Yorke, Breuer emigrated to the United States where he worked as an associate professor at Harvard and maintained a working arrangement with Walter Gropius, Gropius was the original founder of Bauhaus school. Breuer operated an architectural practice in New York from 1946 until he retired in 1976.

Breuer’s buildings and furniture designs were always distinguished by a great attention to detail, a simplicity and a clarity of expression. Considered one of the last true functionalist architects, which is the simple principle that architects and designers should design a building or product based solely on the purpose of that building or the use of that product Breuer is credited with shifting bias of the Bauhaus from an Arts and Crafts movement to the more modern Arts and Technology, movement. Breuer’s design philosophy is still very current today and many pieces of modern, tubular steel furniture in use today can trace their origins back to the Breuer design experiments of 1920’s.

The Wassily Chair, the first steel tubing chair

The Wassily Chair, was originally known as the Model B3 chair, was a club chair designed by Marcel Breuer, aged only 24, in 1925-1926 while he was the head of the cabinet-making and joinery workshop at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany. The Model B3 was a cutting-edge design that used the simplest and most modern materials available at the time. It was the first chair to be produced using steel tubing. The name Wassily was more or less a marketing ploy used by a manufacturer in the in 1950’s due to the fact that Breuer had producer a Model B3 Club Chair for his friend the artist, Wassily Kandinsky when he took a liking to the original prototype.

Seamless steel tubing had been perfected in Germany during the 1920’s, mainly for ammunition production, large bore artillery shells in particular. Before seamless steel tube was perfected, the tubing that was available has a welded joint or a seam. This joint made the tube difficult to bend. Bending would cause the tubing to fail and the tube seam would collapse.

Like many of his contemporary designers Breuer want to to reduce his design to the simplest form possible. His intention with the Model B3 chair was to make the chair transparent in construction. He wanted to design a product that had form and mass but using the minimum of material. This was more than an aesthetic idea, Breuer wanted his
furniture to be reasonably priced, very high quality, hygienic and available to ordinary people. I think Breuer would have loved Ikea’s sale strategy.

It is said that the idea for the Model B3 chair came to Breuer when he owned an Adler bicycle. Adler by the way is German for ‘Eagle’. Bicycles in the mid 1920’s had been one of the first massed produced objects made utilising the new seamless steel and stainless steel tube. It is sad that Breuer made his Model B3 chair from the same seamless steel tubing as his bicycle handle bars. The only tubing available to him was this type which was 20mm so it is said that is what he decided to use for his chair. These steel chairs were always intended to be mass produced however they ended up being made inn relatively small numbers in small work shops and factories.

In 1927 Breuer wrote: ‘Two years ago when I saw the finished version of my first steel club armchair, I thought that this out of all my work would bring me the most criticism, it is my most extreme work both in its outward appearance and in the use of materials; it is the least artistic, the most logical, the least ‘cosy’ and the most mechanical.’

The chair was originally offered both as a folding and non folding chair in its original form. Black and white fabric was also available, as well as a popular wire-mesh fabric version. I have not found much information on the mesh fabric examples. Later examples use leather. I have sat in leather versions and canvas versions and in my opinion I find the spring tensioned canvas more comfortable.

The Model B3 chair, like many other designs of the modernist movement, has been produced since the late 1920s, and continuously in production since the 1950s.

Marcel Breuer

The Cesca Chair, another design classic

The chair was in fact an experiment in Breuer’s quest to develop a steel tube cantilever chair, it lead directly to his other design classic the Cesca Chair designed in 1929, also meant to be transparent. The chair was named after his daughter Francesca. I personally much prefer the Model B3. Both of Breuer’s chairs are still in production today and to finish with a cliché they are both ‘design classics’.

The Cesca Chair, Geller House II, Lawrence, Long Island 1967 – 1969

Was this a success story or a failure? A brief overview of the iconic product and doomed car company.

In 1981, in a brand new, state of the art factory in the small town of Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, and supported by a 100 million pound investment by the British government, the Delorean Motor Company started production of their iconic stainless steel clad sports car, the DMC12, or more commonly, ‘The Delorean.’ Unfortunately this was to be their only model.

The car’s body was designed by the Italian design house, Ital Design by Giorgetto Giugiaro. They are based in Moncalieri, Italy, founded in 1968. The engineering was designed by Delorean’s chief engineer, WilliamT Collins.

The car’s unique construction consisted of a glass fibre shell onto which uncolored brushed 304 stainless steel panels were fixed. Gull-wing doors topped off the project and are mainly what the car is best remembered for, other than its appliances in the ‘Back to the Future’ series of movies of which it was, in my opinion, the star.

One of the Four Gold Plated Delorean Cars.

Three of the cars were gold plated in 24K gold. These were made for marketing proposes and a new gold plated car was produced from spare panels. The car was only ever produced in left hand drive apart from 16 units as they were intended for the Japanese market.

The car was never considered to be fast, or to handle well or even to be very well built but the demand was huge. The car was expensive, in today’s money around 66-68000 USD. It was in demand and customers were known to pay 10,000 USD over the asking price to secure a car.

Engines were fairly underpowered being Peugeot/Renault/Volvo, 2.85 litre, V6 producing a paltry 120 hp once the catalytic converter was fitted. They had to fit the catalytic converter to enable sales in the USA, the car’s target market. The gearbox was also manufactured by PRV, both engine and gearbox were built in France. The gearbox was available in 5 speed manual or as a 3 speed automatic.

The production run was extremely short. The factory produced cars for just over a year and in that year a mere 9200 cars were finished. Those not sold in 1982, were re VINed to suggest they were manufactured in 1983.

Sales were hit by the recession, which at the time was the biggest to ever hit the American car industry. In 1983 after John Delorean’s arrest on drugs charges (he was found to be innocent) the factory closed its doors. The 100 million pound investment from the British Government was gone as was the money received from private investors, many of whom were American celebrities.

I personally love the car. It evokes a period of time when design was pretty much overlooked by car companies. Think of some of the run-of-the-mill cars that were being produced in 1982, mostly horrible. The Delorean stands out from the crowd and they really have to be congratulated on producing a design classic. This is a car that still looks fantastic today by modern design standards and is a comfortable, if a little underpowered performance/sports car. I think if the recession had not hit the company so hard they would have gone from strength to strength and I think we are all a little poorer for their demise. We need individuals like John Delorean more than ever.

Double Stone Steel, would love the opportunity to be able to PVD some of these cars panels, I think a pvd, ion plated, colored stainless steel Delorean in Black would look fantastic. If anyone is brave enough, they can contact me via the blog.

The Delorean

A look at this now timeless design classic from the 1920’s and its inspirational designer.

On the 9th of August 1878 , in Enniscorthy, a small market town in the southeast of the Republic of Ireland, Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray was born, Eileen would live a long life and passed away on the 31st October 1976 at the very respectable age of 98. She would leave the world some of the most recognisable and iconic furnitures designs ever produced.

Eileen, began by studying art at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1898. Her interest soon turned to furniture design and interior design. My favourite of Gray’s designs is her iconic and beautiful Bibendum Chair.

The Bibendum Chair

Poster of Bibendum, the Michelin Man by “O’Galop” 1898. O’Galop was the pseudonym of Marius Rossillon, the French artist and cartoonist who created Bibendum

Eileen Gray’s innovative Bibendum Chair is easily one of the 20th century’s most recognisable furniture designs. The Bibendum chair was designed by Grey specifically for lounging in and socialising with friends. It was for places to be comfortable in.

The Chair’s back and armrests consists of two semi-circular, padded tubes encased in soft, black leather. The name that Gray chose for the chair, Bibendum, originates from the character created by Michelin to sell tyres. The Michelin Man is called “Bibendum”, a word taken from the slogan “Nunc est bibendum” meaning “Now is the time to drink”. In this particular case, to “drink”, or absorb, bumps and obstacles found on the road. He was originally shown depicting bicycle tyres, so he looked quite mummy like.

The chair was designed for a French hat designer, Madame Mathieu Lévy owner of a highly successful boutique selling extremely stylish hats. Lévy had commissioned Gray to re-design the interior of her apartment on rue de Lota in Paris. The brief was to include, a new and original appearance with innovative designs. The process took Eileen Grey four long and painstaking years; from 1917 to 1921. During this time, Eileen Gray created the Bibendum chair along with the interior wall coverings, furnishings, rugs and lamps.

Gray wanted to create the apartment so that it fulfilled the needs of her client and suited Madam Lévy’s lifestyle . The apartment was designed to go along with any particular mood, from formal dinner parties to informal evening gatherings. The chair was designed for the room so that it looked inviting and made you want to sit down in it. As the apartment was being designed for a trendy, modern, young woman, Eileen Gray’s wish was to make it quite alternative and daring. The Bibendum Chair in itself was unlike anything ever seen before and its originality was quite amazing at the time. It still fits in to a modern setting today. Like all classic design it is of a time and timeless.

The Bibendum Chair was relatively large piece of furniture for the period. The chair’s depth is approximately 840mm and its height 740 mm tall.

The frame of the Bibendum Chair including the legs, are made of a polished, chromium plated, stainless steel tube. Stainless tube was a new highly innovative material. The first stainless steel was created in 1913 by Harry Brearley who created a steel with 12.8% chromium and 0.24% carbon.

The framing of the actual seat, the part you sit on, was made of beechwood and there was rubber webbing that was inter-woven across the base of the seat to provide added comfort. Gray made a point of using plain coverings for this particular chair as well as another, the Serpent Chair which was a simple, plain red.

In 2009 one of her original serpents sold at Christie’s for almost €22m, the highest price ever paid for a piece of 20th Century furniture.

Eileen Gray’s Serpent Chair

Gray also designed the Pirogue Boat Bed for Madame Mathieu Lévy, which was also completely plain. The furniture designs were kept simple so that the apartment would not look too cluttered or messy and so that the eye would be drawn, first of all, to the client’s display of tribal art.

Eileen Gray’s Pirogue Boat Bed

The art critics of the period loved the Bibendum Chair and reviews in papers and magazines exclaimed that it was a “triumph of modern living”. The chair was designed as part of the modernist movement which was completely different from Gray’s earlier, more traditional work. She decided to make the change in style to simply make “progress”.

Thanks to her great achievement with her Bibendum chair and the other furnishings designed at the apartment on Rue de Lota, Gray was given a significant surge of confidence in her own design and business ability, so she made the very brave decision of opening up her own gallery in 1922. Madame Mathieu Lévy’s commission provided a great springboard for financial success for Gray and she became finiancally independent from her family, an amazing achievement in the 1900’s for any single, unmarried woman.

In today’s money, a full grain leather-coated Bibendum Chair would sell for an approximate price of £2300.

The remarkable Eileen Gray. Portrait by Berenice Abbott,Paris, 1926

A timeless selection from Bauhaus, Gropius, Wagenfield and Burchartz

Walter Gropius, a German architect, industrial designer and teacher was the founder of the renowned Bauhaus School in Weimar. Gropius was born on18th May 1883 and he passed away on July 5th 1969. The school opened in 1919 and closed in 1933.

Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School. 1883 – 1969

The Bauhaus faculty was a pantheon of modernist designers and architects. Gropius’ ideas and philosophy helped to attract a faculty that included Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Otto Bartning and Wassily Kandinsky, all of whom are now household names for the design-conscious. The work of these designers still has a huge appeal to our modern aesthetic sensibilities as they were such innovative designs when they were first produced. Nothing like them had been produced for mass production before.

Walter Gropius is to this day regarded as the paragon of classic Bauhaus design. He studied architecture at the beginning of the twentieth century before entering the design bureau of Peter Behrens in 1907, along with Mies van der Rohe and Corbusier. As an independent architect and industrial designer, Walter Gropius went on to design the simple and functional Gropius door handle, which was first produced by S.A. Loevy in 1923.

Walter Gropius’ door handle design

I for one, can not conceive of an Apple or a Braun product’s design without the influence of Bauhaus design.

Dieter Rams, was the head of industrial design for Braun for over thirty years. His legacy in product design can not be underestimated. He left us his principles of good design which he developed during in the 1970s.

Wilhelm Wagenfeld 1900 – 1990

Door handle in polished stainless steel WD28CHR from Tecnoline from original prototype1928

Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s experience first as student and then as head of the metal workshops of the Bauhaus instilled in him an innate functionalism which informed the career of one of the twentieth century’s most understated yet influential product designers. The handle he designed in 1928 exudes a mechanistic, modernist rigour, its stripped-down design eloquently expressing the downward motion of the lever and the pivoting action of the spindle.

After leaving the Bauhaus, the Constructivist influence on Wagenfeld’s design waned and his products became more human and more ergonomic. The second door handle he designed (in 1966) embodies these changes and Wagenfeld’s influence can clearly be seen in the Ulm school and the designs of Dieter Rams and then in a subsequent generation of product designers from Jasper Morrison to Sam Hecht.

Max Burchartz

Max Burchartz’s Lubetkin extended lever handle in bronze

Max Burchartz (1887-1961) is best known for his graphics and photo-montages. He was involved in the Constructivist International with László Moholy-Nagy and Theo van Doesburg. Burchartz was an influential (if now relatively forgotten) figure in the development of the door handle during Modernist period. Responsible for overseeing the design of the ranges and the corporate design of German manufacturer Wehag, his hardware designs of the late 1920s reflect the same clarity and the Constructivist aesthetics which also informed his graphic work.

Originally conceived in 1929 as an economy item suitable for social housing, the lever handle was picked up by Modernist architects as an unobtrusive design perfectly suited to the emerging Functionalist aesthetic.

I think that a feel good design can be thought of in three basic ways.

The purpose of any good design for a building or a product is that the design creates a fantastic user experience, It makes the user want to spend time in the beautiful building or using a beautifully designed pen knife.

Personally I generally think a great design in terms of three things usability, utility and desirability. A great design brings pleasure to the customer or user and a great feel good design brings repeat sales to the manufacturer/designer.

Looking at the concepts of usability, utility and desirability.

1. Usability

We’ve have expressed his before and we’ll no doubt say it again, products and buildings are there to have to help solve problems. They can’t just be so many pretty lines on a page. The design has to be usable.

Philippe Starck’s lemon squeezer

After all, people want products buildings and spaces that they can use to the full. If a design is usable and beautiful then the end user won’t care as much about complexity and a ton of features they never use.

Designers and architects should aim for designs that are intuitive, that are simple to use. If you are opening a door or opening a pen knife, then it should be obvious, simple and enjoyable. Great designs have to focus the users’ attention and they have to communicate the action we want the user to take.

‘Use this slot to open the pen knife’ should be as obvious and simple as if the designer was standing beside you telling you what to do. When you have opened the blade you will still have all your finger nails and you wont be bleeding. A little over-simplified but basically true.

2. Utility

For me hand-in-hand with usability is utility. Products or buildings serve a need – that is any building’s or product’s core value, it’s very reason to be. It has to be useful. Great design can solve problems for users. Just as much as an design does those things, so must the functions and actions that go along with it, using the product should be simple and fun. There is nothing worse than a badly designed building or product. I have been in many attractive buildings that really are a chore to be in. There is one building in London , which is a bland design but OK, but the lift….the lift talks too much, drives me crazy. No real reason for this, just a poorly thought out design. It spoils my experience of the whole building. A talkative lift..no.

Designers are sometimes guilty of straying away from their pure design ideas a little bit with the excitement of adding additional features or an extra technology that offers no real benefit to the client or the user.

For me, the most successful designs take away extra unneeded functions, not add them and focus on how to make the building or product easy and pleasurable to use. These slightly pared down designs are enjoyable to be in or to use. Just as the ridiculous talking lift haunts me for being unpleasant and annoying, I still get a little bit of enjoyment every time I close a MacBook Air. It just closes so well and stays closed brilliantly.

Features, like the overall product or building, must be usable and useful to users. If not, first the extra features and then your design or products become superfluous to your client’s needs and they stop using them.

1962 Vespa GS160

3. Desirability

The best products in any class are desirable. People want them first even before they consider the cost.

But desirability doesn’t have to mean how the aesthetic makes a user feel about a product, which is at least how it’s been viewed before. A product or building does not have to be pretty to be a fantastic design that make the user feel good. After all designers and architects can’t hope to control a user’s feelings, but the designer or architect can certainly understand and influence those feelings. They can enhance someone’s day or their living space through carefully thought out design.

Desirability can be how designers try to influence their user or client to take action through design. Designers can make a building a beautiful calming place to be and they will influence people to stay. To stay and eat, to stay and live or to stay and spend money. Just enter any Apple store around the world. The design of the store is as important as the design of the product. I know quite a few people who can not bring themselves to buy an Apple product anywhere else but in one of the flagship stores that the company have all over the world, the latest being found in Istanbul by Foster + Partners. It features, lots of glass and stainless steel.

Apple store, Istanbul, Turkey

Bronze – an ancient material

Bronze and brass are both alloys of copper, Bronze is an alloy of Copper and Tin and was discovered around 3500-4000 BC by the Sumerians, or the Chinese or the Serbians. We don’t really know. Modern Bronze is typically 88% Copper and 12% Tin. Below is a figure head in Bronze that has been dated to 4000 BC and is currently the oldest bronze we have. It was found in Golden Gate Park in the USA in 2007. We do not know who made it, if it was brought to the USA or if a lost indigenous people manufactured it. All we can say is that it has lasted the test of time very well. Most of our best preserved artefacts are made in bronze. To me bronze connects us with the past. Nearly all of the ancient bronze statuary that have been found still appeal to our sense of aesthetics.

Bronze figurehead, dated circa 4000 BC

Brass

Brass is an alloy of Copper and Zinc and was discovered around 500 BC. Modern Brass is typically 90% Copper and 10% Zinc. The head below is from the confusingly named Benin Bronze collection, it is in fact a brass dated at 500 BC.

Cast bronze door from the 1400s, Ghiberti Paradise Baptistry Bronze Door, Dumo Cathedral, Florence

How do they compare to each other, and to copper?

Both Bronze and Brass are harder than copper. Brass is malleable where as bronze is hard and brittle. Bronze is a reddish brown color and brass is a muted yellow somewhat similar to gold but duller. Brass band yes, bronze band..no.

L’Homme qui marche by Alberto Giacometti

In general, brass in used in a lot more industrial processes than bronze whereas bronze is a material for artists. It is very difficult to tell the alloys apart visually.

Brass will give us door handles, letter boxes and the door fittings, where as bronze, will be used to give us the door itself. In general brass is a sheet material than can be shaped, bronze is a casting material that is ideal for sculptures.

L’Homme qui marche by Alberto Giacometti

Bronze sculpture

The bronze below is by Alberto Giacometti,the Swiss artist, born in 1901. The figure is a life size bronze, which Giacometti produced in 1961. It is now the world’s most expensive bronze, in fact it is the worlds most expensive sculpture. The sculpture was sold in a Sotheby’s auction in 2010 for an astonishing 104.3 million USD. The work is called “L’Homme qui marche 1”. Or ‘The walking Man 1’

The look and feel of the piece is said to represent what Giacometti felt when he looked at a woman. Giacometti died in Switzerland in 1966 at the age of 65 from a heart attack.

Mon chien, Worst by Rembrandt Bugatti Circa 1905, bronze

In and out of fashion

Brass was the favourite of the Victorians with many household accoutrements being in brass. Having brass in the home was a great demonstration of status too as it took a lot of servants’ time to clean and keep the brass shiny.

After the Edwardian period brass took a nosedive in popularity for many years, it would never have been seen in the sixties for example and at that time was deemed as a very old-fashioned material.

In the 1980’s brass made a spectacular return as you would have observed if you ever visited showhouses on newbuild housing developments during that era. Door handles, trivets, ornaments, lighting (Flemish chandeliers, lanterns and trims), switches and sockets – brass was considered the upmarket option.

Francois Pompon (1855-1933) – ‘CORBEAU’ a paginated bronze figure of a bird. Sold for $97,000

Bronze has never really been out of fashion being so widely used by sculptors but it has certainly enjoyed peaks in popularity.

After the first world war monuments when large public works diminished in popularity more intimate sculptural works were in demand. This was the beginning of Art Deco movement which rose to its full strength during the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties before declining at the onset of the second world war.

Key influencers in this period were Bugatti (although ironically he died before Art Deco really got going) and Francois Pompom.

Bronzes are still being created and sold today from the original casts of Bugatti’s.

Modern alternatives

Today, using the actual materials of brass and bronze can be prohibitively expensive and also impractical for architecture and interiors, for instance, brass is very soft and needs a lot of maintenance to prevent discoloration.

With modern technology however we can still have the beautiful look of brass and bronze even recreating aged, antiqued, polished patinas, through using PVD coated colored stainless steel.

Exterior of Miu Miu store in PVD coated stainless steel colored to a finish midway between brass and bronze.

Balloon Dog (Orange) signed and dated ‘Jeff Koons 1994-2000’ (on the underside) mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating

121 x 143 x 45 in. (307.3 x 363.2 x 114.3 cm) – Executed in 1994-2000

A primal color

The color black.. it is a very primal color, it symbolises power, darkness, it is literally the complete absence on light and of a more compelling interest to us, elegance and luxury. Black was very possibly the first color ever used by humans in art. Cave paintings found at the Lascaux Cave in France portray a bull and other animals drawn by an unknown artist more than 17000 years ago, using black charcoal as the medium. With a minimum of strokes a very powerful image appears on the wall. The images are still striking today and instantly recognisable. The black outline of the bull is as fresh as the day it was drawn.

Ebony

Ebony is a tree which is hugely valued for its sold black colored hardwood. Ebony is amongst the most expensive woods in the world and comes mainly from Africa, India and Sir Lanka. Ebony is so extremely dense and hard that it will sink in water. Because of its expense, it is used sparingly to highlight areas on furniture and objects and is almost exclusively used on the very highest quality furniture and items such as finger boards on guitars and violins. Ebony symbolises power, wealth and elegance and, on a more sinister note, is also used to produce grips for handguns.

Obsidian

Obsidian is a natural black glass formed in volcanos from felsic lava. The name Obsidian comes from Obsius, which is a black stone found in Ethiopia. It has been highly prized by man for over 700,000 years with the first arrow heads being produced around 8000 years ago. The main appeal for obsidian is the fact that it can be made incredibly sharp, up to 100 times sharper than any modern steel.

Rare pre-historic obsidian arrowheads

A modern day use for Obsidian has been beautifully demonstrated by the signature Tateossian pebble. Tateossian, one of the world’s leading jewellery and accessory brands has used 2320.50g of highly polished black obsidian with rose gold to create a luxurious paperweight. This elegant object is an exceptional work of art with 60 carats of white diamond dust making it a very special object.

Tateossian paperweight made from obsidian, diamond dust and rose gold.

Black in interiors, furniture and furnishings

Today we see a resurgence of black in the home. From luxury bathrooms to modern bedrooms black finishes are in demand. Whilst black is always in fashion, it comes and goes in home decoration, it was popular in the 1980’s, such as the interior below.

Although predominantly steel-colored the beautiful 1986 Lockheed lounge has very deliberate and distinct black painted feet. This piece of furniture is on record as the most expensive by a living designer. It sold recently for 2 million dollars. Today black furniture is again at the top end of the market, a position matched within the jewellery industry. The most luxurious watches are created from black PVD ion coated material such as the limited edition Piaget Altiplano Skeleton black PVD watch which retails for around 60,000 USD.

The Piaget Altiplano Skeleton black PVD watch.

In the kitchen, black granite has been used for many years for work surfaces, now however the color is moving around the kitchen. Door and cupboards are now in black. Black wall tiles are used as splash backs which work particularly well with stainless steel taps or sinks.

Black wall coverings are not limited to tiling, you can chose from hundreds of black wallpapers and fabrics. Once you introduce further materials such as PVD coated colored stainless steel other fixtures become possible in black also, such as cladding, skirtings and switches and sockets.

Balloon Dog (Orange) signed and dated ‘Jeff Koons 1994-2000’ (on the underside) mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating

121 x 143 x 45 in. (307.3 x 363.2 x 114.3 cm) – Executed in 1994-2000

Jeff Koons’s change in direction from finance to art

The ultra famous and hugely controversial American artist Jeff Koons who was born in the small town of York, Pensilvania on the 21st January 1955. Koons works in many media. My personal favourites of his work has to be those fabricated in colored stainless steel.

During the early 80’s Koons was heading for a career in the financial sector, actually becoming a commodity trader. In the 90’s Koons fabricated a series of sculptures in highly polished, colored stainless steel that represented everyday objects. Objects you would find at a kids party or lying around the house.

On November 12, 2013, Koons’s Balloon Dog (Orange) sold at Christie’s Post- War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York for $58.4 million, making the sculpture the most expensive by a living artist,This work is one of five unique versions, the other colors being blue, magenta, red and yellow.

I made a balloon dog exactly like the one below for my son’s 3rd birthday party. It was a fantastic day, Jeff Koons helps me remember that day in detail every time I look at his work, to me that memory is worth the 58 million dollars, at least that much. My own balloon dog only cost a few cents but it did only last an hour

Stainless steel as a sculptural material

I work with stainless steel, in fact my company Double Stone Steel, produces colored stainless steel sheet and profiles. This is where Koons really does impress me. Stainless steel is generally thought of as a hard flat material, versatile but hard, koons somehow transforms stainless steel into a soft, pliable material, his Ballon Dog in Orange looks like you could pop it with a pin. You can feel the air pushing at the steels inner surface, trying to get out. It looks like you can squeeze it.

Koons’ work is fun and interesting. I can relate well to the manufacturing process as Koons employs a more or less factory style of production. He employs skilled metal workers and other artists to produce his pieces.
I have no problem with this production type of system as architects and other designers have done this for hundreds of years. How many architects actually build the buildings they design, how many product designers produce the products they design?

For some reason artists come under a lot of criticism for utilising this way to produce their work. If people are will to pay 50 million USD plus for one of Koons’ pieces I would say they are more than happy to support his production methods.

“Production line” sculpture

Most of Mr Koons’ colored stainless steel pieces were made by art fabricator Carlson & Co., which unfortunately closed its doors for the last time in April 2010. The company, based in San Fernando, California, was founded in 1971by Peter M Carlson. They were famous for working directly with the artist involved in th e project and the work was of the very highest quality.

Carlson & Co became one of the best-known manufactures for artists seeking to produce complicated, large-scale and super expensive works of art in stainless steel or other materials, Carlson later reopened in November 2010 after finding a new partner, trading under the name Carlson Arts LLC

Jeff Koons – Balloon Dog (red) – 1994-2000

High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating

Jeff Koons – Balloon Dog (Yellow) – 1994-2000

High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating

Jeff Koons – Balloon Dog (blue) 1994-2000

High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating

A mirror-finish giant bean

Cloud Gate, also known locally as “The Bean”, is by the fashionable and brilliant Indian born British artist Sir Anish Kapoor. Kapoor was knighted in the 2013 Queen’s, Birthday Honours list for services to the visual arts. He was born on March 12, 1954 in Mumbai, India. Kapoor won the Turner prize in 1991 for this an untitled piece in Sandstone and Pigment. Cloud Gate was Kapoor’s first public sculpture in the USA. Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the 1970’s

My personal favourite piece of his Cloud Gate which is the centrepiece of AT&T Plaza at the Millennium Park in Chicago Illinois. The piece was inspired by a drop of mercury and is just such a beautiful, startling thing.

Cloud Gate’s surface reflects and distorts the Chicago’s skyline. Visitors are able to walk around and under Cloud Gate’s 3.7 meter high arch. On the underside is the Omphalos, which is Greek for Navel or Boss. This word is how the Greek’s described the centre of the world, it was a powerful religious symbol to them, describing a stone at the centre of the world, there a several of these stones throughout the Mediterranean. All the Omphalas are marking the centre of the world, usually the Omphalas were erected in the place with the most trade and money at the time. The Omphalos stones are also referred to as baetylus which means sacred stone, these stones were usually dedicated to a God.

An ever-changing reflection of the cityscape

The Omphalos is a concave chamber that warps and multiplies reflections. The sculpture builds upon many of Kapoor’s artistic themes and is very popular with tourists as a photo-taking opportunity for its unique reflective properties. The sculpture plays with light and changes constantly, minute to minute. If the sun is hitting the stainless steel directly you cant look at it with open eyes, if a white fluffy cloud passes over head, you see a distorted image of the cloud, other worldly, strange not belonging to us but recognisable.

The sculpture Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor showing the reflected skyline of Chicago in its apparently seamless polished stainless steel surface.

The light changes through out the day and the Cloud Gates changes with it, the sculpture can be bright and beautiful on a spring day or brooding and sullen, sitting sulking on a cloudy afternoon. I was lucky to be there on a stormy, black night, watching another reality’s lighting storm taking place in what looked like a view portal into another place. It is something I will never forget a beautiful experience.

The reflections in the mirrored stainless steel surface of the Cloud Gate sculpture, Chicago by Anish Kapoor, dramatically illuminated at night.

Temperature affects the piece dramatically, in the summer it can be far too hot to touch and in winter far too cold to touch without sticking to the thing.

Art of architectural proportions

Cloud Gate was constructed by Performance Structures, Inc. (PSI) based in California with final on site assembly by Chicago based MTH industries, between 2004 and 2006, the sculpture is made up of 168, 10mm thick plates welded of 316 stainless steel and its highly polished exterior has no visible seams. It measures 10 metre by 20 metre by 13 m metre), and weighs 100 tons. The sculpture has been polished by very skilled hands. The polishing alone is a stunning technical achievement, really stunning. When you run your fingers over the surface, there is nothing to feel other than the perfect surface, no ripples, bumps, dents, or dings.

The stainless steel surface of Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture covered in ice in freezing Chicago temperatures.

The British engineering firm Atelier One and the freelance engineer Chris Hornzee-Jones (who later went on to form the engineering firm Aerotrope in 2005 which would focus on Air Turbines, Low Carbon Vehicles and Art Pieces, provided the sculpture’s structural design, this was a difficult object to design and the elegant solution found by Mr Hornzee-Jones is just beautiful.

Costs were difficult, the original estimate were were around 6 million USD. The final figure was closer to 21 million USD. No public money was spent, the entire project was funded from donations.

“What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline … so that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one’s reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around.”
– Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate sculptor

Gates, but not as you know them, from the three Gahrs brothers.

Lots of stainless steel fabricators and steel working companies around the world produce gates and balcony railings. I have my own particular favorite fabricator in the realm of gates that is Metal-Atelier Gahr who can be found in Molkereistraße, Bischofshofen, Austria, which is around 190 km east of Innsbruck. A family business owned by the slightly crazy but artistic Stefan Gahr, Herbert Gahr and Robert Gahr. Robert learnt to weld at the tender of 4 years old.

These three Austrian master steel fabricators produce stainless steel gates and balconies, railings and sculptures, that are without doubt, beautiful works of art.

Stefan Gahr, Herbert Gahr and Robert Gahr

The gates below are by Stefan Gahr fabricated in 2003, from uncolored stainless steel, grade 316. The surface has been finished by hand using a grinder. Stefan was born in 1975 and considers himself to be a perfectionist.

Gate by Stefan Gahr fabricated in 2003

Here is an example of a very unique stainless steel gate fabricated in 2005 by Herbert Gahr. The stainless steel is finished by hand.

Stainless steel gate and balcony fabricated in 2005 by Robert Gahr

This beautiful colored stainless steel pedestrian gate is by Robert Gahr from 2005. In 316 stainless steel, it features a hand finished surface with a beautiful colored stainless steel panel in blue. It was fabricated to match a blue colored stainless steel balcony on the same project

Below is a stainless steel and colored stainless steel door by Robert Gahr from 2006. Again it features a blue colored stainless steel surface and has been finished extensively by hand. This door would make a great addition to any modern home.

Colored stainless steel door by Robert Gahr from 2006

The gate below is another unique pieces by Herbert Gahr from 2005, it features a rusted corten steel finish with a colored stainless panel in green.

Gate by Herbert Gahr, 2005

The mirror polished surface in combination with wild welding lines.

Stainless Steel sculpture by – Robert Gahr

Master’s of Sheet Metal said this about Herbert Gahr in spring 2011.

It was on his thirtieth birthday that Herbert Gahr bravely quit his day job as production manager for a small metal engineering company in Austria and set out on his own he wanted to become recognised as an artist. A daring departure.

Twenty-nine years passed between a candelabrum made for the woman who had been his boss and his largest commission to date — a weighty sculpture for a traffic circle in Krumpendorf. Even today, departures and fissures are still a determining element in the work of this sculptor, renowned as a pioneer in welding art.

Gahr explains: “A cleft boulder, a plant, a broken tree trunk can inspire images in the mind’s eye, images that I interpret in art. Nature is my greatest source of inspiration. It offers all the shapes and colors and countless compositions. The art that derives from these natural patterns is always lively.”

‘The characterising aspect in Herbert Gahr’s is the welding seam, the seam joins discontinuities in the metal, closes or bridges gaps and at the same time emphasises them in a striking manner. “We change the welding parameters — the power level, temperature and welding speed. We lay one seam on top of another, experiment with a variety of gases and in so doing use virtually every process — right through to cold welding. This is how we achieve forms and deformations that flow naturally, almost organically, in the brightly shimmering, tarnished colors resulting from oxidation — paintings made of liquid steel.’

Looking at the cladding which is both symbolic, decorative and central to this house design.

House 77
Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal
By dIONISIO Lab
Year completed 2010
Architect: José Cadilhe
Project Team: José Cadilhe, Emanuel Fontoura (Final Design)
Contractor: Consarte Lda. (www.consarte.pt)
Constructed Area: 232 m2 or approximately 2500 square feet.

Cladding to House 77, Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal

Stainless steel cladding is generally thought off in the public mind as being very expensive. It is obviously perceived as a durable and 100% recyclable material but it is considered a little on the pricey side. Until recently stainless steel cladding was used more or less exclusively on large scale, big budget, headline projects designed by the world’s leading architectural practices. Projects that wanted to impress with their green credentials or just make a mind blowing architectural statement used stainless steel for their cladding.
I think in many of our minds, stainless steel is almost to be treated as a semi precious valuable metal, used by very high end design and product companies like Rolex or Apple.

However there has recently been an exciting and developing trend in the architectural world, whereby architects and designers around the globe are now using stainless steel on smaller to small scale projects. This has led to a crop of contemporary homes popping up all over the world that incorporate a large percentage or at least a higher than normal percentage of stainless steel in their design and construction.

One of my personal favourites of these contemporary homes, is the beautifully elegant house , House 77 project located in the seaside town of Póvoa de Varzim, Northern Portugal. The project is to be found in the north quarter of the town.Which is close to the beach and has the highest population density in the city.

On the front of House 77, which is a small, narrow, 232 square meter space, there is a small laser cut pattern that looks almost like an alien writing or runes, Historically however, the designs known are known in Portugueese as ‘siglas poveiras’ and in the past these symbols were used by the town’s citizens and thus house’s owner’s descendants to mark property belonging to the family.

Detail of the “siglas poveiras” symbols in the cladding

Interior of 77, Póvoa de Varzim, Portugal

So the stainless steel cladding on this unique home is extremely personal to the family that lives there and does reflect the ancient culture of the local area and the city of Póvoa de Varzim but in a modern way. This design is in the past, the now and the future. To my mind it also reflects the traditional tiled facades all over Portugal. I think they are called ‘azulejo’ but I am more than likely wrong on that point.

Stainless steel gives architects and designers a huge opportunity for individuality and creativity in the cladding sphere. This is perfectly executed in the design of the stainless steel cladding system at House 77. The shutters also work in their normal mode of providing shade, privacy and security but also add an exciting and modern almost sculptured feel to the project.

The 316 stainless steel is used as a simple shutter system. The stainless steel shutters can be open or closed or partly opened, it extremely flexible, elegant and beautiful. The stainless steel allows light to flood into the space. I think it a very unique design that allows stainless steel, which is obviously not an opaque material to control light into a house. Really very clever.

House 77. Showing aperture between the stainless steel cladding and the interior glazing.

The house also features stainless steel in other rooms, including the airy kitchen and the bathrooms.
The blinds on the rear elevation are made from aluminium and as you can see from the photo open floor to ceiling, again allowing light to flood into the home. The house gives an interesting light display for a passer by.

House 77, Portugal illuminated from the interior showing symbols in the stainless steel cladding.

Key data

The Design Concept

The design and the design process

The Statue of Liberty, New York, United States

Fredric Auguste Bartholdi and Gustave Eiffel

The pedestal and Joseph Pulitzer

Eero Saarinen and the design of the Arch

The cost and construction for the project

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association, JNEMA

Materials

Thoughts of the experts

Background

Highlights

Pavilion de Thé

Marilyn

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – life and reputation

Mies’ furniture

Mies’ philosophy and the Barcelona Chair

The Barcelona chair today

Robert Bruno and his house of welded steel

For the love of steel

An architectural sculptor and an organic structure

Metallurgy graduate turned sculptor

Why stainless steel?

The Chinese Imperial Water Dragon

The sculpting process and the pitfalls to avoid

Stainless Steel’s Applications and Benefits

Stainless Steel’s Durability and Technical Properties

Stainless Steel’s Architectural and Aesthetic Benefits

Stainless Steel is Hygienic and Easy to Maintenance

Constructivism and the Pevsner brothers

Gabo’s life and work

The Constructed Head No.2

Model for a Construction in Space, 1966

Marcel Breuer’s career and reputation

The Wassily Chair, the first steel tubing chair

The Cesca Chair, another design classic

1. Usability

2. Utility

3. Desirability

Bronze – an ancient material

Brass

How do they compare to each other, and to copper?

Bronze sculpture

In and out of fashion

Modern alternatives

A primal color

Ebony

Obsidian

Black in interiors, furniture and furnishings

Jeff Koons’s change in direction from finance to art

Stainless steel as a sculptural material

“Production line” sculpture

A mirror-finish giant bean

An ever-changing reflection of the cityscape

Art of architectural proportions

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