VESSEL, NEW YORK CITY
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© Michael Moran for Related-Oxford
The client was always in support of their ideas. “We realise that projects are great when we have a great relationship with the client,” he says. “They were really engaging and involved throughout the whole process.”
A lasting finish
The studio knew they wanted to clad Vessel with something “warm and inviting” to offset the fact that the majority of Hudson Yards’ towers are glass. “We wanted something to counteract that and act as a draw,” Dudeney says. They first looked at copper but were put off by the weathering and changes it would undergo, and the consequent maintenance required. “We designed Vessel to stand for generations,” he explains.
Despite disregarding copper itself, the studio still wanted to achieve the same finish, so began exploring alternative options. They looked at electroplating but weren’t convinced, as it “isn’t always super stable”. They then came across a process called physical vapour deposition (PVD), where sheets of stainless steel are placed
into a vacuum chamber and exposed to nitric oxide. The gas reacts with the surface of the steel, creating a chemical bond and producing the copper colour Heatherwick were after. It’s a process that has commonly been used on a much smaller scale – such as iPhones and pens, explains Dudeney – but is now being utilised on a much larger scale. “The reason we really got drawn to it is its longevity. You don’t need to maintain it – the colour will look exactly the same in 90 years.”
The material was put through rigorous tests by the studio and contractor Permasteelisa, to see how the surface would react once it had been formed and shaped into the required parts to fit the curved soffit. “We realised once the sheets were coloured they would need to be bent into shape, and we needed to find out what that would do to the surface and the visual outcome of it,” Dudeney explains. The only altering was on the “tightest radius bends” where “you get a slight stretching in the colour but it’s very minute,” he says. “Otherwise it stands up very well to being
PVD
Physical vapour deposition (PVD) was used for the material – where sheets of stainless steel are placed into a vacuum chamber and exposed to nitric oxide
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ADF OCTOBER 2019
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