Daniel Libeskind is turning into something of a ceramophile. Last month we covered his announcement of plans for a building in Berlin clad in a unique metal-surfaced ceramic tile. On the 14th of this month Cosentino Group, which produces and distributes innovative surfaces for architecture and design, unveiled a permanent sculpture at the Group’s headquarters in Almería, Spain by the architect and designer Libeskind. The spectacular polycentric spiral is called Beyond The Wall. A temporary version of the sculpture was first showcased in Milan’s Statale University during Milan’s Design Week 2013.
Beyond The Wall is based on the infinite possibilities of the spiral. It is not a traditional spiral, but an innovative one which opens a plurality of directions along many different trajectories, propulsively twisting. The geometry of the external material on the sculpture’s wall forms a contemporary fractal pattern related to the Golden Section. The pattern is integral to the wall structure, carrying within itself the structural logic of modulating scale and proportion.
It is the first sculpture/structure to be created using Dekton, a blend of materials used to make porcelain and glass combined with quartz and produced with SPT (sinterized particle technology). This is a high-tech process that accelerates the metamorphic change that natural stone undergoes when subjected to high temperatures and pressure over thousands of years.
The revolutionary material has zero porosity, a consequence of the sinterization and ultra-compaction. Together with an absence of micro-defects that cause tension or weak spots in some other surfacing materials, this represents a important technical breakthrough.
Libeskind’s aim was to find a similarity that never quite repeats, that fits and locks together in an open-ended logic, as a network develops. But at the end of the day, as is so often the case with architects who attempt art, we are left with the feeling of an abstracted sketch for a building, not sculpture. It is, nonetheless, a handsome presence.
Garth Clark is the Chief Editor of of CFile.
Above image: Daniel Libeskind, Beyond The Wall, 2014, produced in a new hybrid material that blends porcelain, glass and quartz.
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Videos for Beyond the Wall courtesy of Cosentino.
Daniel Libeskind, Beyond The Wall, 2014, produced in a new hybrid material that blends porcelain, glass and quartz
Virtual rendering of Beyond The Wall at night and a sketch by Daniel Libeskind, 2013.
Cosentino Group’s President, Francisco Martinez-Cosentino and Daniel Libeskind at the unveiling of Beyond The Wall on February 14, 2014.
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He’s been looking at Ken Price . . .
Would like to see the second (currently unavailable) video.
Hi, Harriet!
If you’re talking about the second video on our page, it’s working for us!
– Bill