Lamellux Paneling
9 October 2009
“Keep On Keeping On”
Exciting is a word I use a lot in these blogs, but to tell you the truth, if I’m not excited about the product, I would just as soon keep surfing the internet until I do find something that excites me, an item I bring up because I have come across one of the ding dangest products I believe I have ever seen.
Lamellux is a French manufacturing company that… well, I was going to say that they manufacture a number of different paneling materials from resin and wood, but “manufacture” seems so cold a word for so sublime a process. Let us say, rather, that they create, they imagine, they conjure up a line of products that is nothing short of spectacular. When I first saw a sample of the product itself, a piece of paneling called Vibrato (there’s a picture of it at the top of this blog), I i
mmediately found myself fantasizing about the uses this product would have in a line of furniture I’ve not yet designed. But a product like this one lends itself to all kinds of possibilities, and for a few moments, as I say, my mind was racing with thoughts of what a body could do by approaching the old—the furniture we already know—with the new—the products invented by Lamellux.
Well, as it turns out, people talented enough to come up with materials like this also have the foresight to make their own line of furniture with it, so I have to say that they have already usurped the field. But it is
very much a product that could be used in any number of ways.
Two of Lamellux’s lines of wood and resin products are presented here. The Vibrato we’ve already mentioned is actually a thin layer of resin which runs between two wood facings, which creates a marvelous stained-glass effect. For their Quertec line they have run resin down between stripes of wood, thereby combining the glories of wood with the transparency of resin. But it’s not just A wood and A resin. It’s a choice, and when I say choice, I mean mind-boggling, holy kamoly choice. Quertec is available in oak, beech, ash, cherry, walnut, or just about any wood you can imagine, all of which come with a choice of resins in a host of consistencies from the translucent to the opaque and in a spectacular range of color choices. And what that means, in turn, is a veritable smorgasbord of design choices for those who incorporate these products into their furniture or 
architecture.
If you go to their site, most of the project ideas they have thus far explored have been for commercial applications. Backlighting these materials produces some truly dramatic effects, which makes them just the thing for a receptionist counter in a large business concern or the bar we’ve shown here. But, really, I believe they’ve just scratched the surface here. The sink vanity we’ve shown here is a wonderful idea, one of what will surely be hundreds as this product makes its way through the designing field. But that’s the way it is with innovations. They just keep on innovating!
Joseph
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