The pieces are a series to be made out of mirror-polished stainless steel, thus reflecting their surrounding atmosphere as well as the precision of craft.

While designing the pilgrimage chapel, we felt compelled to complete the space by imagining what would indeed complement its atmosphere. A project with no electricity or plumbing seemed to be the perfect opportunity to resurrect the experience of space by candlelight, thus suggesting the necessity of candelabra. The small points of light that emanate from the candelabra give a quiet radiance to the dark walls of the nave, while the polished steel objects are inextricable from their stations in the space. These are objects as architecture.

Part of this concept of intimacy stems from the relationships people have with materials. These relationships are both a priori and a posteriori, both innate and experienced. There are reasons aside from physics why humans find comfort in warm water, and similarly why some won’t immerse themselves in water completely. There are reasons beyond status symbolism that people find fur and leather pleasurable, and why others find it repulsive. There are reasons, in addition to nostalgia of early survival, that we enjoy a good fire, with its arrhythmic sound, its warmth in our face and the cold at our backs. A material gives both quantitative and qualitative characteristics to an experience, and it speaks to both mental associations and design. We constantly think about materials in our work, but beyond the simple questions of form, use and manufacturing. We think of them as philosophies, as history. We think of them in terms of social relationships and psychological dichotomies, in terms of their associated fears, attractions, symbolism, and stigmas. We enjoy learning about new materials and are curious about how they will find their place in the tangible and intangible aspects of our culture.

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