Ghost of Stone

The mastery of art connected with Diamut on display in New York

On display in New York, a series of four items that challenge the conventional combinations of materials thanks to an unorthodox mix of processes and tectonics.

Customer: Precision Stone
Actual Work City: Long Island
Country: United States

In his 25-year career in the glass and stone sector, Kerry Clark had never been asked to find a tooling solution for creating items for an art exhibition. Then, one day, Clark - Brand Sales Manager for the Glass Division of Diamut America - got a call from Miles Driscoll, Design Engineering Manager at Precision Stone in Long Island, New York. Driscoll had been chosen to collaborate with renowned architect and M.I.T. teacher Cristina Parren᷉o in fabricating two artifacts for her upcoming exhibition at Art Omi in Ghent, N.Y. The exhibition - TransTectonics in Construction - will display a series of four items challenging the conventional combinations of materials thanks to an unorthodox mix of processes and tectonics.

Parreño's vision for her Ghost of Stone prototype involves the use of a strong carving technique generally associated with the tectonics of stone-walling, but applied here to glass. Driscoll was also going to carve the rock for a piece shaped like Ghost of Stone (which Parreño entitled "Rock in Full Metal Jacket"), in which the machined rock would be joined with cast aluminium. Parren᷉o produced two other prototypes for the exhibition: PlyGlass - a provocation where the technique of lamination typically associated with plywood is applied to glass, creating transparent strength through redundancy, and Wooden Bubble - created by blowing glass into a wooden mould and thereby burning the wood. "Even though an art exhibition isn't one of our typical projects, we deal with new applications all the time for our customers that manage labs, offering a range of possibilities for creating the required complexity".

For Driscoll, the challenge of Ghost of Stone lay in reducing the glass block so nothing chipped off, obtaining the right geometries. The first issue for Rock in Full Metal Jacket was to determine and source the right material. «Volcanic rock, which is usually used as a landscaping boulder, is extremely soft» he said. «Because it's light, not dense, and highly porous, the molten aluminium could flow inside it. The second problem was that it was very quick to mill». Both Clark and Driscoll knew that putting Cristina Parren᷉o’s vision and unique concepts into practice would demand the utmost attention to detail. A licensed architect in both Spain and the U.K., Parren᷉o's research in TransTectonics at M.I.T. explores non-conventional combinations of materials using small prototypes, later transformed into larger scales and contexts to become architectural installations that enrich public areas.

«The concept behind this exhibition of 12x12x12 prototypes is extremely relevant for architecture» said Parreño. «It's a way of working with interesting materials, digital technology and highly advanced machines, but at the same time incorporating a time-honoured trade and the old ways of working with materials». Anyone who attends the exhibition will see how each of Parreño’s pieces clearly stretches the limits of innovation in design research. Diamut and Biesse show similar intensity in pushing the limits of technology to deliver tooling and automation solutions to commercial labs working with glass, stone and other materials.

Projects often involve many technical and artistic challenges. To all intents and purposes, every project that comes through the door really is a work of art for us
Clark Kerry Brand Area Manager – Diamut America
Clark Kerry
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