Beneath the Surface Blog

The Straight Line Designs workshop in Vancouver is full of whimsy; we envision their studio bookshelves lined with Dr. Seuss and colorful children's books to release the imagination.  Creating custom furniture pieces that function equally as working furniture as they do decorative sculptures, the nine person studio has embraced the playful possibilities of furniture design.   We have the lead designer Judson Beaumont of Straight Line Designs with us today to discuss the ideas and process behind his furniture pieces.

   "Hollow Chair"

gpidesign: What is your general design philosophy? What do you believe is a good furniture design?

Judson Beaumont: Be different. You have to differentiate yourself enough to be able to compete in the design and manufacturing industry these days. There is always someone out there who can do it faster and cheaper, so you have to figure out how to do something nobody else is doing. A good design is one that sets itself apart from others. A design that challenges the norms of modern design and is still able to achieve a great level of functionality is a successful design.

   "The Apple Cabinet"

gpidesign: Your designs are fun, creative, and different. What’s your secret to keeping thinking out of the box?

Beaumont: The secret to our design process is to challenge ourselves as designer and as builders. We strive to design pieces that, while they might look interesting on paper, they are actually quite complicated to materialize into fully functional pieces of furniture.

   "Tear Away Bench"

gpi design: Take "Tear Away Bench" for example, could you elaborate on what your design inspiration is and what the typical design process is like?

Beaumont: The tear away bench was to create a sense of discovery in the user. With traditional wood benches, you accept that it has a flat top, flat sides, legs, etc. The Tear Away Bench is the answer to our question “What is actually underneath these solid, rigid surfaces?”. It is not exactly a correct answer, it is more about the discovery of other possibilities that lie under the surface.

   "Squiddy"

gpi design: Your bio expresses that your rule is: “if you can draw and design it, you can build it.” It seems to be quite a bold statement. Have you ever designed something that is technically impossible to build? Take Squiddy for example, how did you balance between aesthetic and functionality?

Beaumont: That rule still stands true for us to this day. We always try to maintain that old “sky is the limit” methodology that designers use in our fabrication methods. Although something might seem quite simple once you see the final product, the process used to create this final piece may include countless hours of testing and tweaking which actually give it more value. If your design can’t be produced by someone else, you maintain your unique place in the market.

With Squiddy, we sought to give a solid material, Alder wood, a life of its own that seemed other-worldly. Each Squiddy is thought to be an individual creature that only sits still long enough for the user to exit the room, after which it is free to roam around and explore.

Each leg is hand shaped from a solid 2”x2” piece of Alder and finished with a low-gloss clear coating.

   "Cracked Cabinet"

gpi design: If you were given the chance to incorporate lighting into one of your furniture pieces, which one would it be and what would the design look like?

Beaumont: We would be interested in incorporating lighting into our Cracked Cabinet. We are thinking maybe the inside surfaces of the cracked area can be illuminated behind opaque white plastic as if the light is coming from within.

Many thanks to Judson for opening up our minds to the playful side of design!

This week, we are looking at this extraordinary application of ceramic tiles in exterior design. Ceramic tile possesses a high durability and is easy to maintain. It is commonly used for wall, floor, and roof covering. Modern manufacturing techniques have made it possible for this ancient material to be produced in various colors, shapes, and sizes, allowing architects and designers to create both artistic and functional décor pieces.

The exterior of this elegant-looking music hall by Spanish architect Cor & Asociados in a village near Alicante, Spain is comprised of pearly porcelain tiles. Slightly different from stoneware tiles, which are the classical ceramic tiles, porcelain tiles have more breaking and wearing resistance. To achieve this iridescent effect, each plate went through the process of firing (three times), vitrifying, and metals disposition.

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Unlike many projects GPI Design creates where our clients desire an evenly illuminated surface with artificial lighting, the exterior of this music hall interacts with perspective and natural light. If you look closely, you’ll realize that the ceramic tiles are perfectly flat even though they appear to be dimensional and ceramic tiles with dimension have been an important feature of Spanish design. The constant change in its light reflection creates a vibrant movement and enables the building to appear less massive in a subtle way.

Image Credits: Dezeen

Maybe it's time for more late night office sessions, the multitude of windows leads to endless inspiration! Playing with our backlit onyx samples late in the day, a quick glimpse out the window at the dramatic clouds reminds us why we love working with natural stone materials.

Evening view from the GPI Design Westlake office

Much like this sunset, the colors and patterning in natural stone are entirely organic and specific to a certain point in time.  While the composition of the sunset is fleeting, the patterns formed in an onyx panel are stamped for eternity; a tangible piece of nature turned into a building material. Both the sunset and the onyx are gorgeous because of the components that constitute their forms and patterns, but lighting brings a whole new layer of warmth and dimension to their perception.

12" x 20" sample of backlit Iranian Blue Onyx Pin It

Admittedly, the thought of placing color gel filters over the windows to tint the sky to our exact liking DID cross our minds. (And what if that cloud moved left just a little bit? Ooh, I would love to see more gold just above the horizon.)  We constantly remind ourselves to run with the randomness of nature. Sometimes you just can't design beauty.

For the National Cancer Institute project which we’ve been working on for months, GPI had the pleasure of presenting our mock-up of the very unique backlit wood system last week in Washington, D.C.

Above: Initial project rendering by HOK

Over three years ago, Bill Hellmuth of HOK envisioned these unique backlit feature walls to bring light and texture to the long lobby hallways at the main entrance to the National Cancer Institute.  To translate the initial rendering of the backlit wood lobby feature walls to the photographs of the mock-up taken just last week, there have been countless hours of coordination between the surface, structure, and lighting elements. Our team has become quite captivated with the project.

Above: Mock-up photograph by GPI Design

The surface was the driving element in the conceptual design of the wall.  GPI Design sourced an exotic Redwood burl (yielding large panels), sliced the wood to under half of a millimeter and laminated between glass.  The seamless LED backlighting environment keeps the wood surface as the primary visual focus, pouring through the translucent wood material in an unexpected pairing of the newly redefined material with backlighting illumination.  Next came the custom structural hardware components engineered to hold the wood and lighting systems safely and in a complementary relationship.  The majority of this testing and detailing has occurred internally, communicating with the project team in D.C. via shop drawings and conference calls, so there was much anticipation built up over the unveiling of these illuminated wood panels.

Above: Mock-up installation progress

The GPI Design crew spent a full day assembling four of the wall panels to demonstrate our system (over 250 panels will be installed in the final project).  The mock-up was designed so that pins, joints, lighting controls, and accent lighting were all crafted to represent their appearance in the final installation. As the project team (owner, architect, lighting designer, general contractor) in D.C. arrived to the mock-up the next morning, sentiments of quiet contentment and satisfaction were in the air - a successful review with great dialogue generated.

Above: Mock-up review meeting

It’s creative surfaces and great project teams like these that make us fall in love with our job all over again.

THANK YOU to: HOK, MCLA, James G. Davis Construction Corporation, TSI Architectural Metals, Cleveland Marble, and The JBG Companies

Our typical backlit project involves bold and intricate moves of concealment (hiding evidence of light, structure, seams, external supports… the list goes on), and leads to a natural curiosity for designers to learn how we assemble those walls/ceiling/floors. So I was understandably refreshed to see the architectural topic of “Truth Windows” pop up on my Google Reader this morning.

These small niche-like elements allow a deeper and more analytic view into construction methods. False windows are punched through the inside walls of straw and timber homes to allow a glimpse of the materials and layers used in the wall construction. Maybe it’s their petite size and battered wooden framing that makes them so quaint, but there’s something charming and imaginative about discovering one of these in a standard home setting.

Hmmm, how would our next backlit onyx wall look with a small “truth window” right at eye level, for building users to see the innards of our creations?

How could this idea translate to commercial and public space?

Image credit: Dornob

Over the past several months (due to the magical networking powers of LinkedIn) I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of connecting with Robin Acker Bush, founder and president of Voices of the Earth. Based out of Langley, Washington, Robin and her team capture underwater photographic images that can be applied to a myriad of surfaces in interior environments.

No two photographs are the same, and as Robin eloquently explains, while seemingly suspended in time in the depths of the ocean, the moment in which each image is captured is vividly imprinted in the photographer’s mind.  Check out these images – close ups of underwater sea creatures with stunning coloration and patterning.

But it’s really about more than the gorgeous photographs – Robin’s message resounds with a strong artistic drive and dedication to bringing nature to the forefront of design discourse.  Robin’s creations are typically used in healthcare design (imagine: mysteriously soothing underwater images in as you enter a hospital lobby) and have a wonderful capacity for backlighting. She is also breaking into the hospitality industry with full force, so look out for her stunning images in up and coming design projects.

This Thursday, we salute you Robin for your dedication to the artistry of nature and unique approach that renders each image a truly original experience!

Image Credit: Voices of the Earth

As the counterpoint to our blog post “5 Reasons For Designers To Love Faux Stone Panels”, today we take on the alternate perspective and illustrate the benefits of natural stone panels. Given that this succeeding post quickly catapulted to twelve points, which I narrowed to six here, it’s pretty clear which material we regard as a superior architectural solution.

Here are the criteria which make glass-backed natural stone panels a superior architectural solution:

1. Backlighting and optical clarity

When backlighting panels for feature areas, natural translucent stone panels take on a sparkling appearance that is a result of the crystalline graining that formed in the stone over thousands (or millions) of years. With glass-backed exotic stones, such as onyx, the stone layer can be thinned from 1 mm to 12 mm, allowing much light but still retaining the visual effect of naturally layered depth. Most man-made faux stone panels tend to lack natural depth, appearing flat and dull when illuminated with a backlighting source.

2. Large Panel Sizes

If you’re designing for a large scale installation or simply want to minimize joints, natural stone panels can be sourced in very large sizes. It depends on the variety of stone, but we’ve utilized exotic onyx and marble panels up to 5’ x 10’. Acrylic or poured resin stone panels tend to be limited to standard sheet sizes. Even if the man-made products are thickened to increase rigidity and yield a larger panel, the additional surface thickness interferes with light transmission. With glass-backed natural stone surfaces, larger panels are created by simply increasing the thickness of the glass backing, preserving the translucency of the stone layer at only millimeters thin.

3. Natural Variation

Acrylic and resin stone panels are standardized into existing collections, offering limited selections of coloration and patterning. Each panel has the same patterning, yielding repetitive images. By using natural stone panels, visual characteristics vary within the slab itself and across the larger scale, creating unique fluctuation within installations. Natural veins and movement are reflected as dynamic bookmatched images across panel joints.

4. Longevity

Natural stone is classic, elegant, and distinct. For quality design features that withstand time, natural stone panels open up the most possibilities in creating enduring spatial elements. Onyx panels sustain their quality, with no evidence of surface degradation over time and very little maintenance required.

5. Exterior use

To our knowledge, there are no translucent faux stone materials that are rated for exterior applications. Glass-backed natural stone can be used in exterior curtainwall applications and as part of insulated glazing units. This only holds true for high quality fabricators with thorough testing, so use discrimination when selecting a source for exterior panels.

6. Uniqueness

Real stone is a product of Mother Nature, and each slab for each project is unique unto itself. Your client becomes the proud owner of a truly unique work of art.

--> I’d like to thank @whysideas for engaging in an interesting Twitter conversation in reaction to our first blog post. There’s something to be said for authenticity in architecture. Cheap materials and quick solutions show a sort of short-sightedness on the architect’s part, and if you’re not careful, technological capabilities can distort the appropriate contextual solution for a project. As @whysideas stated, “technological advances are so important but should give physicality to the architect’s imagination, not dictate it”. Our advice? Have some patience to allow your designs to unfold, and dedicate your time to implementing high quality materials that meet their intended use and will enhance the image of your space.

Ouch. I feel like I’m backstabbing my trusted old friend, the natural stone panel. Lately we’ve seen a surge of interest in faux stone products, particularly for backlighting applications, and have found ourselves recommending these products for certain instances. There are some high-quality acrylics, poured resins, and co-polyester materials that have made advancements in the last five years and become promising contenders to the natural stone panel.

You’ve specified an exotic natural onyx, the client has fallen in love with it, and now after budgeting exercises, you need value alternatives that still come close to the original design intent.  The inherent beauty of onyx panels instantly makes them the focal points of space, so it’s not always wise to cut the budget in these areas. There ARE certain instances in which man-made faux stone panels will maintain your design intent, meet the budget, and please the client, but decisions should be made with discrimination.

When is a man-made onyx material a decent architectural solution? Here is our criteria for selectively determining when to use man-made faux stone panels versus the real thing:

1. Complex Geometries

Let’s face it – even with the most advanced processes, natural stone panels just doesn’t like to be coerced into complex geometries (particularly bent and curved shapes). Man made stone materials offer real flexibility in creating thermoformed and custom shapes. In addition, mitered edges are easier to fabricate and control quality.

2. Overhead applications

In terms of offering dramatic weight reduction, faux stone panels offer real benefit to designers and greatly reduce structural requirements. Plus if the stone will be viewed from a distance and out of reach from physical contact, it’s likely that the occupants will never know the difference.

3. Cost

Based on our experience, faux stone panels are typically about 50% less expensive than traditional glass-backed natural stone.  The lightweight nature will reduce the amount of structural steel necessary to support the faux stone in a feature wall or ceiling application.

4. Control/ Predictability

Especially when you’re in a time crunch and looking for a quick material solution to add to your specs, mother nature doesn’t always provide natural stone material in the exact way you have envisioned it, packaged neatly for insertion into architectural drawing sets. For optimal control and predictability, man-made materials offer the advantage.

5. Time

This piggy-backs onto #4 above.  With an easier specification process, man-made translucent stone panels greatly simplify the decision-making process. Existing product collections set clear parameters on available surface styles and options. While the manufacturing lead times for faux and natural stone panels are roughly the same, the sampling and specification process for acrylic or resin stone panels is usually quicker.

--> Now of course, there’s always a distinct set of parameters in which materials are best suited, and I must do justice to GPI's long history in the natural stone industry.  So stay tuned for when we explore the advantages of using natural stone panels (which, if nothing else, will ease my guilt for writing this blog post!).

Expand your design palette with imaginative interior feature wall products. Stone, wood, and light are three basic elements of nature. Layer them into an integrated assembly, and the visual effect is stunning.

A sleek alternative to backlit onyx mosaics, these backlit stone and wood screen panels create extravagant patterns for an interior feature walls and ceilings.  Combining illumination, translucency and pattern, the layered panels illuminate without evidence of structural shadows or untidy grout joints.

Above: Flat-Lite™ LED Light Panel

Flat-Lite™ LED Light Panel + DURA-Lite™ Translucent Glass-Backed Stone

Custom laser cut wood screens (available in any custom pattern or lettering)

Flat-Lite™ + DURA-Lite™ + Custom Wood Screen

In an interplay between organic veins and geometric repetition, the wood screens frame the natural movement of the onyx. Backlit illumination increases the contrast between the surface materials, providing an intriguing focal point for commercial and hospitality spaces.

Backlit granite bars with the correct lighting controls allow designers to explore the furthest ranges of materiality. Granite is often associated with traditional countertops, but with advanced technology and the correct backlighting system, the flip of a switch can dramatically transform from day to night.

For this backlit granite bartop application in Dubai, GPI developed DURA-Lite™ panels that consist of an ultrathin layer of granite laminated to glass backing. The glass backing provides reinforcement to keep the granite stable during production, shipping, installation, and everyday use.

For this particular application, the design team chose the RGB LED backlighting system for its flexibility. The lighting system is kept off during the morning hours, with the white backlighting illuminating the granite bartops in the evening hours. On more celebratory occasions, the restaurant owners can change the backlighting to a colored arrangement.

These photographs explore the range of aesthetics that thin granite panels with colored backlighting can provide. With adjustments to the illumination, the granite material is rendered in different moods, attracting different groups of people and completely altering the programmatic use of the space.

Thin granite veneer panel (without backlighting)


Granite panel illuminated with flat LED backlighting (cool white light)


Granite panel illuminated with flat LED panel (on red setting)


Granite panel illuminated with flat LED panel (on blue setting)


Granite panel illuminated with flat LED panel (on green setting)

The bottom line? Designing color variation into your lighting schemes can completely redefine space and provide an important selling point to the property owner.  Controls for RGB backlighting systems might add a bit of cost, but the flexibility is priceless.