Here at Material Lab, we’ve always been interested in crossovers between creative disciplines. From day one we’ve been open and available to designers of all kinds, architects and artists alike.
We understand that materials can be interpreted and used in a multitude of ways depending on the mind-set of the prospective specifier that discovers them. The nature of material interpretation can throw up some really exciting and intriguing end products, be that in a highly commercial or more questioning and conceptual form.
The inquisitive team at Dutch studio EDHV defys classic genres, instead applying its own label Architects of Identity to define its practice, which remains fairly indefinable given that it's made up of graphic, digital and spatial designers. But within this multi-disciplinary approach, the team finds a freedom to ask some tantalising questions about materials, design and humanity.
We shared one of its playful projects Morphodynamic Tiles a few months back, and I wanted to go a little deeper in showcasing some of the studio's other work, including Frost Light, which I saw at both Dutch Design Week last October, and during Milan early this year.
At a time when the world’s natural resources are being scrutinised more than ever before, with environmentally conscious governments, as well as scientists and designers, equally looking for alternative methods to power our infrastructure, the team turned its attention to the question of energy.
As opposed to focusing on the consumption of energy, it instead seeks to harvest it, and from a most unlikely of sources: ice. Recognising that ice itself is in fact contained energy waiting to be released, the team has cleverly created a light that is powered by the natural phenomena of ice melting upon a solid piece of aluminium.
As the internal LED light is powered, the melt water is fed down a beautifully designed drip tray that directs it into a copper vessel, which in turn also doubles up as a mould for the freezing process of the next ice block – an endless cycle of energy conversion.
Much like an owner of an original VW Beetle, the studio has an ongoing relationship with rust, the difference being that it embraces it.
Once again harnessing it as a useful process in itself, the team creates completely unique surface patterns by screen-printing metal powders in geometric formations, which are then reprinted over the top of with acid and salt.
The ensuing chemical reaction slowly transforms the pattern through rusting with variations in corrosion and colour, varying from experiment to experiment.
Originally starting with a screen-printed poster format, the team has also applied the process onto wood, which is machined into textured stools.
Another poster project Burners uses exactly the process you would expect from its title; burning. Exploring the notion of fragility, the team creates what it calls 'visual poetry'.
Printing with a specially designed typeface, the team creates messages that can be lit with a fuse. The slow burning and disappearance of the letters offers a momentary live event, fuelled by a beautiful yet destructive energy.
Once again working with paper, this time utilising laser-cutting techniques to cut specially designed shapes, the team creates what it calls a 'Spatial Camo'.
The simple and irregular shape is cut out in a multitude of replica pieces; these can then be joined to create varyingly scaled 3-D structures, formed to the user’s desire. The net-like arrangements hang in space like partially formed clouds that both conceal and reveal the space around them, creating a form of interior camouflage.
Ceramic Symphonies is a project that used the Morphodynamic Tiles project as a springboard with which to develop, with the addition of gravity and evaporation bringing a new and further still unpredictability to the creation of these unique tiles.
