Page 115 - Sharp: The Book For Men SS21

Most experiments yield nothing. But some prove interesting enough to pursue. Injecting soda water into hot glass, for example, resulted in Bocci’s 87 Series thanks to a pearlescent shimmer created by trapped air.
While Arbel, prior to the pandemic, spent half the year in Berlin, where Bocci has a satellite office, Vancouver remains home. It’s no typical design hub, but that may be for the best. “On the face of it, it’s actually kind of a terrible place to do what I do,” says Arbel, referring to the city’s relative youth and its economy run on forestry and mining. “But there’s a kind of discovery possi- ble here that probably wouldn’t be possible in places where traditional craft or manufacturing is more established.” In Venice, for example, the craft of glass-blowing is passed down between generations of the same family. Making is bound not only by one’s creativity, but by familial and cultural expectations of how glass is supposed to be made. Free of dogma, Vancouver is a natural fit for Arbel’s freewheeling approach to design.
I mention to Arbel that his way of making sounds like play, unbound by rules and rigorous structure. “And it is, but there’s a tremendous amount of discipline required to not impose upon a project your preconceived ideas about form, to truly let the material teach you,” he says. “The more intimately we are involved in the process of actually executing the work, the more we are able to discover about what the materials want to teach us, the secrets of the materials.”
To some, the idea that a material might author a work itself may sound frilly. But there is a radical idea underpinning Arbel’s work that is more resonant today, in a climate crisis, than at Bocci’s outset. The construction of buildings or objects has often ignored a material’s tendencies, to wasteful and unsustain- able effect. For example, concrete structures are typically created by pouring liquid concrete into lumber forms that are disassembled after the concrete has cured. This construction process not only wastes materials and labour, it betrays concrete’s liquid nature, says Arbel. “I’ve used the word ‘dishonest’ [about concrete] because you get this rectangular thing that comes from the architect’s imagination that has absolutely nothing to do with how the material wants to behave. We lose the spirit of concrete.” Arbel’s work, on the other hand, begins with observing how a material responds to manipulation. This method of making asks an important question: if we better understand materials — their intricacies, complexities, and idiosyncrasies — can we build in better ways?
Arbel is now searching for answers on a scale larger than a light. On sites scattered across British Columbia, Omer Arbel Office is constructing a series of ambitious and experimental houses. Some are explorations into new ways of working with concrete, the second-most-used material on the planet and one of its most egregious carbon emitters. As Arbel sees it, concrete isn’t going anywhere, so why not find better ways to use it? >
PHOTO BY FAHIM KASSAM
115