Space-age design savvy and material magic
By Tom Howells
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Design history has taught us that true newness is defined less by flashy showboating and more by a nuanced, intuitive grasp of form and materials. So it goes with the computing titan ASUS and its embrace of Ceraluminum: a material created by a new mineralisation process, vaguely similar to anodising, whereby aluminium can be coated with a durable, tactile, recyclable, ceramic-style layer for hitherto unseen applications (not least as a surface for its new ZenBook laptops).
Ceraluminum in tow, the company sought to err away from the tech world and approached Dezeen to conceptualise an exhibition in the creative design space. The publication, long concerned with innovation and materials, was intrigued. “The tech and the engineering parts are just one side of the equation,” says Dezeen’s editorial director, Max Fraser. “How, then, do you then make that usable and appealing through design?” ‘Design You Can Feel’ – a journey through material, craftsmanship and AI – was born.
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For the show, they hit up a number of designers pushing the material envelope in new and unusual directions. South Korea’s Niceworkshop harnessed Ceraluminum directly: they have taken a piece from a recent furniture series, made from old aluminium formworks, and coating it with the material. The de facto showpiece, meanwhile, is a new concept from Kim Colin, Sam Hecht and Leo Leitner’s Future Facility studio.
“They were reluctant to take one of their existing aluminium products and just ceramicise it,” says Fraser. Instead, they have designed a handheld device embracing the AI capabilities of ASUS’s new laptop, but “stripping away a lot of the embellishments and distraction that comes with a screen-based life”.
The roster continues in venerable form with Fernando Laposse, Giles Miller Studio, Natural Material Studio and Studio Furthermore, all of whose practices chime with the four metrics of ‘Enduring’, ‘Everlasting’, ‘Light’ and ‘Unique’ ASUS mooted for the show, presenting work responding to, rather than directly utilising, Ceraluminum. But all are concerned with the tactile expression of the materials they are working with, creating objects that show explicitly how “form, colour and texture can be combined to create objects or moments that awaken the senses”, says Dezeen. ‘Design You Can Feel’ promises a seamless melding of worlds – a quietly fascinating material future made real.
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