It was agreed that the beams were sacred artefacts in their current state and that they would not manipulate them or finish them in any way.īecause the beams were of different lengths and sizes, the architect needed to commit to a geometry that would be able to accommodate the tremendous variety in dimension, while still allowing the possibility of narrating legible spaces. The beams were of different lengths and cross sectional dimensions, and had astonishing proportions - some as long as 20 meters, some as deep as 90 cm.
OMER ARBEL SERIES
The design of the house itself began, as a point of departure, with a depository of one hundred year old Douglas Fir beams reclaimed from a series of burned down warehouses. There is a gentle slope from east to west and two masses of old growth forest defining two “outdoor rooms” each with a its own distinct ecology and conditions of light the house is situated at the point of maximum tension in between these two environments, and as such acts at once to define the two as distinct, and also to offer a focused transition between them. Athens is a new inspiration, simple and pure in its aesthetics but also dense and complex in its history and urban context.” What a perfect spot to feature Arbel’s ongoing research into the reciprocal relationship between copper and glass.Here's some more information form the architect:ĭesigned by Omer Arbel, 23.2 is a house for a family built on a large rural acreage outside Vancouver in the West Coast of Canada. In a way, this location is the starting point from where Ancient Greek civilization spread all over the Mediterranean. Arbel’s experimental pieces are a perfect compliment for this locale in a former 19th-century commercial warehouse with high ceilings and multi-layered brick walls. Bellavance-Lecompte said (in an Instagram post announcing the opening), “Athens is going through a total Renaissance. With the inaugural exhibition of Arbel’s works, the opening of the Athens location in the city’s old port was bound to be a success. The contemporary design gallery originally opened in Beirut in 2010 and since its inception by Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte and Quentin Moyse, the gallery has been spearheading the works of international designers. The premier show at Carwan Gallery’s Athen’s location was a showcase of more than seventy one-of-a-kind sculptural pieces. Luckily, for three weeks a year, the flowering magnolia tress that were planted in the roof’s lily pads will bloom offering a wonderful flash of color. The entire palate is muted… rather than contrasting the region’s frequent grey and rainy skies, timber and metal in shades of grey were used. In this way the base of the stem gains enough strength throughout the duration of the pour to support the subsequent volume of fresh concrete higher up.” In collaboration with our engineer we developed a very slow continuous pour schedule, with the formula for the concrete adjusted so that it cures at the same slow rate as the pour. Arbel says (courtesy of an interview with Giovanna Dunmall with Wallpaper), “Traditionally, concrete is poured in several lifts, allowing each to cure before the next is poured, however in our case this was impossible because of the risk of one lift seeping between the extents of the previous lift and the fabric. This unusual concrete forming process was able to make the nine ribbed “lily pads.” The method involves stretching sheets of geotextile between plywood ribs that are situated in a unique configuration on the foundation. The differences continue, one side is smooth while the other is coarse one side is lustrous while the other is black. Thus, half of the final product oxidizes while the other part does not. The reaction is amazing because one side of the copper is exposed to the glass during the process while the other side is in open air. He says (courtesy of an interview with Helena Madden for Robb Report), “I wanted these pieces to, as much as possible, be a pure reflection of a chemical reaction. Left behind is a frozen metal wave that appears as though it is caught mid-spatter inside an urn that has seemingly vanished. When both harden, the glass cracks and the changed chemical make-up causes it to fall off.
This action caused the metal to wash around the hot container. Once that stage was completed, he poured a molten copper alloy into a newly-formed vessel. Arbel became interested in making glass differently he hired chemists to reformulate the materials and master glassblowers to shape it. After apprenticing at several firms throughout Canada, Arbel began to design prototypes.
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