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Material manufacturing

By Josh Walker 10 : 01 : 2017 Philipp Weber : From Below : Materials

Germany – Philipp Weber has harnessed the coke production process for his From Below project.

The project combines personal history and production processes to create a number of different objects
Pieces from the project will be shown at IMM Cologne, which runs from 16 to 22 January

From Below by Philipp Weber, Germany

Often inspired by manufacturing processes, From Below looks at the production of coke, a fuel with few impurities and high carbon content.

The production process itself is normally conducted in coking plants with temperatures of over 1,000°C and without oxygen. Weber wanted to investigate this process intellectually and aesthetically, and so by developing his own small-scale coking plant, he created a number of objects from the resulting material.

Weber chose to look into coke after visiting the mines where his great grandfather Anton Zielinski worked in 1912. On visiting the mines, the fossil material bituminous coal provided inspiration and an opportunity to explore the subject in more detail because of the complex and technical procedure used to extract coke from the coal.

‘From Below interlinks personal history and production processes,’ the press release reads. ‘From the perspective of the coal, Philipp respectfully seeks to understand a fragment of the earth’s heritage.’

The Big Picture

By taking large-scale, industrial processes and scaling them down to be aesthetically driven, new values are being applied to materials. For more, see our Anti-materials design direction.