Portfolio at NYU

Posted 04.16.03
Touchy Subjects

By Elizabeth Varnell

On the outside, 127 West 25th Street looks like any other grime-covered warehouse in the industrial section of Chelsea. But one only has to duck inside—a cavernous, brilliantly lit library displaying everything from the newest in TechnoGel to fibrous textiles—to get a glimpse of cutting-edge future of design.

Founded in 1997 by George Beylerian, Material ConneXion is one of the largest resources for newly developed materials and processes. The company recently relocated from its dowdy Columbus Circle address and will re-open its flashier downtown digs on November 13. The one-stop shop for artists and artisans designing everything from trunk shows to car interiors, from perfume packaging to bathroom walls just got a whole lot bigger.

Beylerian was the creative director of Steelcase Design Partnership, which produces contemporary office furnishings. After years in the business, he realized that, for all their obvious dependence, furniture designers and the engineers and chemists who concocted new materials, rarely interacted. Instead, the process by which a new plastic or rubber came into use depended on a combination of chance and luck. And with the advent of high-temperature plastics in the 1960s, so many new materials have flooded the market that it is nearly impossible for designers to keep up.

To address this disconnects, Beylerian founded Material ConneXion, a matchmaker to introduce designers, scientists, and manufacturers to each other. ConneXion links "designers obsessed with aesthetics to huge petrochemical companies that don't have the ability to market their materials," he says. Its huge archive gives architects and designers access to the latest creations from industrial giants like Bayer and BASF—companies typically unnoticed or unavailable to individual designers who create small product runs.

ConneXion's 1000+ dues-paying members—designers, architects, artists—use it to peruse 3000 different materials in the physical library, as well as in the online database. Before being displayed, all materials must undergo a rigorous nomination and voting process, which involves a jury of scientists and artists from the international design community. Every month the jury meets to decide the fate of 12 materials that have been submitted by companies and designers.

Because Material ConneXion receives no monetary compensation from the material manufacturers in its library its team of researchers can be entirely objective. Once located, a new material is subjected to a rigorous filtering system. An 8-10 member jury comprised of scientists, interior designers, architects, etc. sits in their New York library once a month to evaluate 40 materials. "The event generally turns into a roundtable discussion with vigorous debate on all sides," says Andrew Dent, Director of Libraries and Materials Research. Scientists debate practicalities like performance or ecological impact while aesthetes quarrel over the beauty or texture of each new submission.

David Pupo, interior design manager for MTV networks, admires Material ConneXion for their integrity. "They don't allow copies into the library," Pupo says, "If they think one company is trying to imitate another material already on the market, they reject it. Companies have to prove to the jury they are using a material in a brand new way. Innovation is key." Pupo presides over MTV network's 1,300,000 square feet of space, designing everything from desks to conference tables to wall panels. "They have been a great resource for us. Just recently we found a clear resin from ATTA Studios based in New York City that we used to make conference tables imbedded with computer guts like circuit boards, keys and wires. Their meticulous listings of product data and limitations are an invaluable resource to the industry."

Like the materials themselves, the library is something to behold. Walking into the newly expanded facility on West 25th Street in Chelsea, one is struck with brilliant florescent beams of lights that illuminate hundreds of panels displaying designs and materials of every kind. At one panel, a visitor can fondle small swatches of TechnoGel, a flexible rubbery plastic formerly used exclusively on bicycle seats. The architects Diller and Scofidio recently used it on bar stools in the remodeled Brasserie restaurant on East 53rd Street. Countless other design ideas are hidden behind drawers, waiting to be discovered. The place has an aura similar to that of Units—the 1980s apparel store—where clothes were folded into plastic zip-lock bags and neatly stacked in white bookshelves. Though modern and antiseptic at first glance, the adjoining gallery space—filled with Marcel Wanders chairs and Philippe Starck creations—provides a welcome splash of color, warming the sleek steel and glass walls.

After overseeing hundreds of successful matches between creators and producers, Beylerian is still honing his company and his vision. "Art is not just canvas anymore, it influences everyday objects and materials and just because the materials are scientific doesn't mean artists don't get it," Beylerian says. Seated in his office, which overlooks the antique dealers that line West 25th Street, he is flanked by a speckled brown earth-toned splotchy cow print Gaetano Pesce love seat and the Wanders floor-length Shadow Lamp. Beylerian has held onto the couch through the years, despite protests from his daughter, Carina Beylerian Effenberger, director of communications and exhibitions, and Material ConneXion member Philippe Starck. Both find the mud-colored couch rather hideous. Incidentally, its mate, a matching armchair, is currently on display uptown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Beylerian understands that design has gone global, and began traveling the globe for the thousands of meticulously labeled physical samples that now comprise the library and database. He is passionate about design, whatever the medium. "From product to fashion to architectural design, we work with all disciplines across the board. They all permeate throughout each other." Materials are catalogued in plastic zip-locked bags according to composition, physical properties, manufacturer, and product type. The database features eight categories of materials: polymers, glass ceramics, carbon-based or cement-based materials, metals, natural materials, and natural material derivatives.

Material ConneXion has evolved into a marketplace or an exchange for the buying and selling of ideas by members who visit the database. "People come to us, use us, and later we see the results in magazines or boutiques. We don't know what Prada does in the library but we hear about what they buy from manufacturers," says Beylerian. "Prada," he adds "just bought over $1 million worth of technology and materials from Mimosa International (a New York-based company specializing in Italian finishes) to make a stucco wall finish resembling rough concrete for their new headquarters on West 52nd Street, after visiting Material ConneXion"

Wanders created his knotted chair with rope made of aramid (a chemical generic name of which Kevlar is a trademarked type in the Material ConneXion library) twisted around a carbon core and impregnated with epoxy. This process enabled him to weave rope knotted like a hammock into chairs able to hold 300 lbs. "It's like a magician charming a cobra out of a basket—how is this possible?" asks Beylerian. And the finished product sits among chairs by Poltrona Frau, Siemens, and Stefan Lindfors in the Material ConneXion gallery space still under construction.

Beylerian literally grew up with architectural materials in Egypt. His family ran a building supply company in the 1940s and the pyramids were always looming on the horizon. After coming to the U.S. in the 1950's to study marketing at New York University, Beylerian opened Scarabaeus, an interiors store in New York, which he compares to Moss, the SoHo showroom owned by Murray Moss. "After the big Italian boom in 1967, amid the plastics revolution, we opened a little Milan shop in Manhattan. Even then I dealt with materials subliminally." Beylerian later imported Kartell products. He bought molds and produced the Colombo chair for $35 in a South Carolina manufacturing facility.

Twelve years ago, Beylerian and Jeffrey Osborn published Mondo Materialis, the companion to a ground-breaking exhibition chronicling 125 architects' response to the question: "What will be the most innovative and fresh materials in the next five years?" Now those predictions have built a company and bred previously unimaginable pairings of producers and designers.

The Brazilian design team OF Fernando and Humberto Campana, famed for created design furniture out of rubble and discarded objects, call Material ConneXion a "library playground archive for designers." They met Beylerian in 1988 when Material ConneXion inquired about the Cone chair they had designed from polycarbonate and stainless steel. "Our work deals with the daily research of materials and this company has been a treasure trove. And it has a lot in common with our ideals about recycling and reusing found materials," say the brothers. "We believe that nowadays creation is directly related to the research of materials made possible through newer technology."

The Campanas' homespun designs are based on natural materials and found objects. And they support Material ConneXion's role in promoting environmentally sound design alongside new plastics and chemicals. "Due to the scarcity of natural resources—mainly wood, this data bank can play an important role in the near future to guide designers in conceiving new ecologically correct products."

Beylerian sensed that the popularity of the environmental movement would increase the use of natural materials in home design in the early 1980s. Now, Material ConneXion and government officials in the Philippines are launching Transformation—a program involving 27 artists and international designers who must create from ten materials native to the Philippines. Material ConneXion is sending the designers large red pulp containers holding tin boxes with the materials. In March 2003, they will produce an exhibition showing the finished creations. Plyboo is the model for this project. It is composed of Bamboo—a plentiful resource that is abundant and grows extremely fast—converted into parquet flooring.

"The goal," Beylerian says, "is to develop production in the Philippines using the natural materials in that country. This will give Philippine manufacturers more substantial work and enable them to produce more than just trinkets and gifts for the tourists. We want to promote sustainable development in the Philippines by designing creations that can be produced from abundant materials."

As Carina Beylerian says, "This is a one-stop candy shop for designers. We do the leg work so they don't have to go searching all over the world." Designers hungry for new ideas can now feed their sweet tooth.