design-phan

Does this ever happen to you: You hear an obscure word or concept and suddenly you're reading and hearing about it everywhere? That happened to me this summer with Corian. We all know about the material in the context of vanilla kitchen counters, but when I was researching a trip to Bordeaux earlier this summer, I came upon the Hotel Seeko'o ("iceberg" in Inuit). 

The hotel, which I ended up visiting and writing about for a fall issue of Hospitality Design magazine, is wrapped entirely in Corian. This makes for a striking sight at the end of a row of 18th-century yellow-limestone facades along the River Garonne. Apparently the Hotel Seeko'o, above, has sparked a brushfire in Europe of copycat Corian hotels. I can't wait to see them; I'm hoping at least one of them is a lacquered lipstick-red.

Coincidentally, while I was traveling, DuPont opened their third Corian Design Studio right here in Philadelphia, in our Design Marketplace building (the other two are in Milan and New York). I missed the opening, but I was able to visit a few weeks ago to see the Corian creations by Harry Allen, designer of my favorite piggy bank among many other wonderful things. Among his designs are some gorgeous textured tiles, above, that are a far cry from those blah kitchen countertops.

But the pièce de resistance at the Design Studio are these sliding window screens that depict, in laser-chiseled Corian, the exact view from the windows when they're bare. The translucent sheets soften the harsh afternoon light, and the precision of detail that was captured by taking a photo of the view and engraving the image onto these panels with a computer-driven router, is breathtaking. The screens are riddled with texture, too — the bumps and ridges in the panels make them feel like a topographical map. It's a giant love letter from Harry Allen and Corian to the circa 1930, 30th Street Post Office and the skyline west of the Schuylkill.

Corian is working with a list of designers including Allen and MIO to create street benches for Design Philadelphia this October. I saw some preliminary sketches, and they're as varied as Allen's designs for the studio. I'm excited to see the city all dressed up.