Whiter than White

BlingCrete™ is pre­sent­ed at the inau­gu­ral ex­hi­bi­tion by Ma­te­rials Coun­cil. Whiter than White is an ex­plo­ra­tion of the pur­suit of ‘white­ness’ in the built en­vi­ron­ment, show­cas­ing a high­ly-cu­rat­ed se­lec­tion of ar­chi­tec­tu­ral ma­te­rials and fin­ish­es.

BlingCrete™ rep­re­sents a new genre of ma­te­rials with its own log­ic of ef­fect that can­not be de­scribed sim­p­ly in terms of the usu­al cat­e­gories of heavy and light or form, con­struc­tion, and sur­face. The ma­te­rial, al­so known as light-re­flect­ing con­crete, com­bines the pos­i­tive char­ac­teris tics of con­crete (fire safe­ty, so­lid­i­ty, build­ing meth­ods) with those of retrore­flec­tion. Retrore­flect­ing sur­faces send in­com­ing rays of light (sun­light or ar­ti­fi­cial light) back pre­cise­ly in the di­rec­tion of the source.

The dia­log with light, last­ing­ly in­te­grat­ed by the com­bi­na­tion of ma­te­rials, cre­ates the spe­cial, de­ma­te­rial­ized aes­thet­ic of BlingCrete.

The ex­hi­bi­tion Whiter than White is the re­sponse to one of the ques­tions most asked of the cu­ra­tors by ar­chi­tects: “what is the whitest…?” and the re­al­i­sa­tion that they were of­ten un­aware how other is­sues such as cost and sus­tain­a­bil­i­ty im­pact­ed their free­dom to spe­c­i­fy the pris­tine ma­te­rials they de­sire.

What makes a ma­te­rial white and what con­ces­sions must be made by de­sign­ers in the face of prac­ti­cal, eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­s­traints? The ex­hi­bi­tion de­mon­s­trates that achiev­ing an icon­ic ‘white­ness’ is not as sim­ple as it first ap­pears.

Lon­don De­sign Fes­ti­val Whiter than White ex­hi­bi­tion Su­per Brands Lon­don – Tent Lon­don Old Tru­man Brew­ery Han­bury Street