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"The material, Dupont Corian, is bullet-resistant and bomb-resistant, as well as being antiseptic," says William Mac Donald. "so it has certain capabilities and qualities that would lend itself to security applications. There are situations we find now throughout the world, we find, such as the financial district in New York around Wall Street. The issue has become more and more a part of everyday life."

"And we're actually talking Corian and others now," says Sulan Kolatan, "and I think what we're going to be doing initially is another version of INVERSAbrane without the glazing in it for a proof of performance in terms of weatherproofing."She is referring to the glaze of SentryGlas Plus, a glass laminate interlayer, which has been part of a major iteration of the design in prototyping.

Kolatan and Mac Donald are the founders of KOL/MAC LLC, the New York-based architecture and design firm they established in 1988. Speaking from their offices, their conversation highlights one of the most pervasive issues in Design to Improve Life today -- the frequent difficulty of getting new work implemented so that its value can be tested and understood and allowed to attract manufacturers and distributors.

A 2005 prototype of INVERSAbrane, in fact, was seen as one element of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition, "SAFE: Design Takes on Risk," was curated by Paola Antonelli, Curator of Architecture and Design and a member of the INDEX: jury. Antonelli's commentary for the show explained that "buildings need protection, too" in an age of aggressive efforts to build in protection against violence.

INVERSAbrane "is made of a very hard, sturdy and resilient material called Corian," Antonelli said, "a material you might already be familiar with because it's used in kitchen counters all over the world. The way the facade" of a building either originally built or retrofitted with an INVERSAbrane skin "is designed and manufactured provides it with a lot of excessive surface. ... nooks and crannies that enable this facade to dissipate strong winds, for instance, or sunlight or even bomb blasts."

And while security issues were the topic in focus in Antonelli's exhibition, a building's ecological life and INVERSAbrane's potential to build in sustainability for energy use, as Kolatan is saying, may be the factors that get it its first key trials in application.

"A version that demonstrates these eco-functions," Kolatan says, "could move toward something that serves as a weatherproofing wall."

And in terms of the topography aspect related to security and the design, "I learned when I was working on embassy and consulate design that you're not so aware of it when you're visiting such sites, but when you plan such places, you realize all the hard walls and bullet-proofing and blast-proofing that go into layers of security.

Originally, Mac Donald and Kolatan were asked to create a project representative of what a turn-of-the-next-century high-rise building might entail.

"We thought the exterior skin of the building might operate as a sort of metabolism," Kolatan says, "and we thought about how it could cover energy functions of the building, how air and light exposure could be harvested in a productive way for the building. So we decided to develop a project that would deal exclusively with that exterior skin."

Pointing out that the costs of complexity and the rising technology of new materials, she says, "the effort to get some of these effects without adding labor, the materials are able to do these things."

Prompted by an invitation to participate in a conference and exhibition at the Pompidou in Paris, Mac Donald says, the RESI(dential) high RISE project -- that initial entry of the team into the field of building skins and their potential, was complemented by KOL/MAC's appointment to the United States Pavilion at the 9th Venice Biennale of Architecture.

"We've continued on with Corian in the development of the building membrane system," Mac Donald says. "So  we're really looking at it as a high-performance ecological wall -- as you have a high-performance vehicle --  which is different from the way many people might approach 'green' issues. But also we've approached it as a design issue, integral with the forming and performances of the wall, itself.

"I think the time is ripe now," he says. "Very few people developing buildings have taken life-cycle costs into account in point-of-sale or even point-of-development calculations. The attitude has shifted greatly since we started developing this. We even have looked at these walls' community aspects, recharging electric  

cars and laptops, providing response systems for fire, pulling pollutants out of the air."

He and Kolatan say they're heartened by growing eco-system interests in sustainability issues. Whether the pathway to demonstration is led by security questions or by environmental issues or both, Mac Donald notes that "there has to be a kind of ethos and awareness" in such topics, "people living a lifestyle that upholds an ethical position as a community" to prompt development interests to move.

Kolatan notes that a collaboration KOL/MAC is making with Corian now in talks for a wall panel that draws on INVERSAbrane is to go to an exhibition in Paris in the fall.

"Maybe now," she says with only a gentle sigh, "the time is right."

Designed by:
Sulan Kolatan (design principal); William Mac Donald (design principal); Theo Calvin (senior designer); Chris Whitelaw (project manager), New York, United States.

Sponsors:
Megan Shaughnessy (DuPont, client representative); Arup AGU, London (consultants).

www.kolmacllc.com

Written by Porter Anderson