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Material Focus: Copper
April 10, 2013
Warm, rosy-toned copper has fallen into favor with contemporary designers. Just as brass was au courant with designers last year, expect to see more of this material in furniture and products in the coming months (our roving editors have already spotted it in a few places during the 2013 Salone Internazionale del Mobile). In the slideshow that follows, we've gathered a few of our favorite examples from the Dwell archive that show how versatile copper can be.
Clad in copper panels that architect Steven Holl had fabricated by the Kansas City, Missouri, company Zahner, the Daeyang House and Gallery is daylit by a host of rectangular skylights (inspired by the musical staff) punched through the roofs and the pool’s floor. Photo by: Iwan Baan.
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Originally appeared in Music Holl: A Copper Clad Pavilion in Seoul
Suspended above the ground floor, an enigmatic, scaly, blue-green mass hovers in the kitchen of an a modern Amsterdam house infused with maritime influences. Architect Pieter Weinen used patinated copper reclaimed from a church roof to clad the hull-like piece. Photo by: Hertha Hurnaus.
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Originally appeared in Ship Shape
What began as one-offs morphed into Seattle studio Iacoli & McAllister’s first in-house collection, which debuted the spring of 2012 at ICFF. Pieces like the marble-topped Algedi table with copper legs exude a relaxed West Coast vibe.
In the shipping container home of Jeff Wardell and Claudia Sagan, exposed copper piping adds visual appeal to the guest bathroom. Photo by Drew Kelly.
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Originally appeared in Modern Shipping Container Home in San Francisco
Mark Schatz and Anne Eamon bought a small sheet of copper, cut out their house numbers, mixed and poured some concrete, and voilá—their own groovy house numbers for $125. See more of their small Texas house here. Photo by: Misty Keasler
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Originally appeared in Small Amidst Sprawl
Both sturdy and whimsical, the Copper Lamp 10Kg by Samuel Treindl and Tobias Sieber is a tongue-in-cheek way to collect a full ten kilograms of metal deposits as a long-term investment.
Wrapped in corrugated copper, the Darnell Residence has a frontier-cabin quality that’s evolving with age. At first it was as shiny as a penny, but that’s changing. “My house looks like it has a skin disease,” architect Jamie Darnell says. “It’s just oxidizing in a weird way. Eventually it’ll go green. This is just the first stage of the patina.” Photo by Chad Holder.
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Originally appeared in Affordable, SIP-Built Family Home in Kansas City
Lighting designer Tom Dixon released this pendant lamp in 2006 at the Milan Furniture Fair. The shade is constructed of plastic polycarbonate and sheathed in a mirror-like copper finish.
Ninebark Design/Build clad a tiny house in Seattle in standing-seam copper. Read more about the 290-square-foot garden pavilion here.
Originally appeared in Garden Pavilion, Seattle
This handmade, copper-plated bike’s minimal aesthetic is reminiscent of vintage track bicycles. Each bespoke fixed-gear bicycle is made to order based on individual measurements. For a selection of modern cycling accessories, view this story.
The Svalbard Science Center, on the arctic Svalbard archipelago, is clad in copper sheeting, a material that remains workable even in very low temperatures. Photo by Nils Petter Dale.
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Originally appeared in Fjord Focus
Clad in copper panels that architect Steven Holl had fabricated by the Kansas City, Missouri, company Zahner, the Daeyang House and Gallery is daylit by a host of rectangular skylights (inspired by the musical staff) punched through the roofs and the pool’s floor. Photo by: Iwan Baan.
Photo by Iwan Baan.
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