MUT Design creates a folded black DeLabré sheet metal to form a ‘Möbius strip’
For the third year running, De Castelli reconfirms its partnership with the Archiproducts Design Awards to produce the trophy for the ADA winning brands. The sculptural object, inspired by the ‘Möbius strip’, is designed by the Spanish studio MUT Design in sheet metal with an unprecedented black DeLabré finish.
Designers Alberto Sánchez and Eduardo Villalón of MUT Design started from the ADA logo, a hexagon that represents the axonometric of a cube. They transformed the two-dimensional logo into a three-dimensional object. The ‘Möbius strip’ winds between two surfaces with no demarcation. In its simplicity, the project conveys the importance of the brand-designer relationship: two surfaces become a single side and a single edge.
Introduced during the 2019 edition in 3 different metals – brass, copper and stainless steel – with a DeLabré finish and confirmed in 2020 in brass, this year the award is garbed in black DeLabré sheet metal. The manual oxidation process renders unique chromatic effects thanks to the formation of different-shaded clouds.
This long process, merging the industrial and the manual, exploits the potential of a material that is never the same, experimenting with its expressiveness – oxidation after oxidation.
The trophy in Limited Edition was manufactured at De Castelli’s Metal Projects Factory, located at Crocetta del Montello (Treviso), which hosts the company’s workshops, as well as an extensive materials library. Archiproducts was given access and has documented the different working phases in this video.
The object was designed to enhance the characteristics of the metal: a thin sheet of metal is folded back on itself without joints or interruptions.
“The möbius strip turns everything upside down“, says the designers. “Outside and inside are no longer discernible. Following a sinuous course and meandering over a two-dimensional surface the eyes return to the very spot from where they started. That is how we imagined the prize trophy, as an inherently seamless object: a single sheet of metal that depicts the principle idea of the awards.”
‘We wanted to create an object for the winners that could communicate the award’s identity and values ‘, explains Enzo Maiorano, Co-founder and Art director of Archiproducts. ‘Two surfaces without a demarcation line come together in a completely natural way. This is how we understand the collaboration between brands and designers, and how we want to communicate it.’