Artisinal Innovation with ‘The Magic Colour Machine’
Last week was the 2022 edition of GLUE, a three-day design route from and for designers, architects, brands, showrooms, galleries, academies, and the general public.
This year’s theme in our Amsterdam Hub was ‘Artisinal Innovation’. With that theme, we found the perfect match! We invited the Rotterdam design agency Studio Loop Loop to show their latest light creations that are the output of a portable anodizing line: The Magic Colour Machine. This setup allows applying robust, non-petroleum-based, reversible colour coatings on aluminum.
Reproducing the process at a micro-scale allows freedom of hacking it, resulting in an exact, computer-driven colouring process that applies anodized colour gradients. This type of gradient anodizing has been achieved neither by the industry nor by the craft.
Aluminium anodizing is an electrolytic colouring process known as an industrialized process. Yet a small-scale, entirely self-made setup allows Loop Loop to flip the standard into innovative breakthroughs. It represents a completely new approach: A bottom-up, small-scale, local approach can result in a sustainable way to produce industrial yet personalized design objects.
With this machine, Studio Loop Loop has launched AVANTI! in collaboration with our partner of twenty years, Solid Lighting.
As the nonchalant name suggests, Loop Loop was born from a relaxed collaboration between Charles Gateau and Odin Visser. Charles has a talent for combining materials science, research and niche production techniques. Odin's expertise is in product development, industrial design and lighting.
Did you miss it? Hope to see you next year for GLUE’s fourth edition!
