Well we got them in for Christmas!

When the clients proposed this project, the brief was for something a little different and we created this extraordinary conversion with a beautifully executed zinc cladding to the rear.

The client commented….’well on their instruction we didn’t really know what to ecpect and we certainly didn’t expect what
we got!

Click here to see the full Mantilla portfolio and other recently completed residential projects.




Commercial

Grand Union – Great Titchfield Street.

Take a look at our latest project for one of Londons leading advertising agencies – we were barely finished when the creatives swooped in and made it their own. Whatever happened to the respect for minimal chic!?!?

Click here to see the full Grand Union portfolio and other recently completed commercial projects

So what else have Matteblak been upto in 2009?

Shadow Boxing at Home House Club

Shadow Boxing on 16th October was voted ‘the party of Freize week’ by guests. Home House club entertained over 900 guests into the early hours, including prominent collectors, architects and curators from the Guggenheim, Whitney Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Zabadovic Foundation, who came to view site-specific work by artists Kate Terry, Patrick Beveridge, Luke Montgomery and a light and sound installation by Laura Buckley and Haroon Mirza and to celebrate the launch of Matteblak’s exciting new Art Into Architecture scheme.

Was it just the art which made the evening go with such a swing or did the Babicka vodka, champagne and oyster bar have something to do with it? Elliot McDonald, curator and organiser of ‘Reconstruction’ at Sudeley Castle comments, “It’s one of the more unique exhibitions I’ve seen at Freize week this year and definitely one of the best parties.” Matteblak’s founder Alex Stevens says, “We got great feedback on the night and some fantastic leads from the show, so let’s hope this is the first of many Matteblak shows.”

Patrick Beveridge’s giant, luminary sculpture ‘Sphere’, installed by Matteblak, made such an impact that a limited edition of 10 will be made in association with Corian design studio. Guests at the Radisson across the road from No. 21 were also treated to a little bit of Shadow Boxing magic by night as a dual screen film by Croft and Balogh was projected onto the front of the hotel.

Other guests who joined revellers at the elegant, neo-classical venue at 21 Portman Square included artist Piers Jackson, hat designer Victoria Grant, art impresario Flora Fairbairn, Tate magazine editor Simon Grant, architects from Zaha Hadid’s studio.

An interview with Matteblak Director Alex Stevens
What is your vision for Matteblak in 2010 and beyond?

Matteblak is a design and construction firm with creativity at its core. We like to emphasise that we can do more than just plan and build - although if that’s all a client wants that’s fine. We like to create environments to be experienced, which could be permanent live / work structures or temporary structures for an exhibition or event.

What do you hope to achieve with the ‘Art Into Architecture’ scheme?

When the two disciplines are brought together, exciting things start to happen. At what point does avant garde furniture become sculpture? When is an interior a permanent art installation? By bringing contemporary artists or designers in at the early planning stage (as opposed to the final stage which is normally what happens when, say, a bar, club or hotel is being refurbished), we can achieve something really sensational.

Where did Shadow Boxing fit into that?

The exhibition demonstrated our commitment to creativity and sent out a message to the art community that we’re interested in working with exciting, emerging talent. I hope that it set a precedent for future exhibitions and projects, while engaging our architectural clients and showing them what’s possible.

We had some very encouraging reactions to the show, the artists and the Art Into Architecture scheme. For example we’re in discussion with a interiors design studio to develop Patrick Beveridge’s ‘Sphere’ into a series of limited editions. We are planning another exhibition in May 2010.

What is your background and how has that helped with the development of this scheme?

I studied at Chelsea School of Art and got a BA in Public Art and Design. I spent most of my time there developing models for large-scale public sculpture, with the dream that one day one of them might be commissioned. (see image 1 and 2). After qualifying, I worked for various construction firms in order to learn from the ground up so to speak [any firms worth mentioning?] which is where I met most of the team who now form Matteblak.

In merging art or architecture, who or what have been your influences?

Well I’m stuck somewhere between the scale and magnificence of Oscar Neimeyer, the playful nature of early Frank Gehry and the overpowering audio visual experience from parties of the late eighties, early nineties. The first thing to really inspire me was Olafur Elisson’s Weather Project at Tate Modern. But more recently works by emerging digital media artists which has opened up a whole new language for interaction.

Artist In Focus: Kate Terry

Thread sculpture is too crude a description for Kate Terry’s meticulous installations which weave architectural spaces together, subtly transforming our experience of the environment. Using brightly coloured and fluorescent threads which are pulled tautly across the gallery space and secured with pins, Terry articulates her drawings into floating structures.

The effects can be ravishing: shimmering plains of colour intersect and cross over to create organic curvilinear inscapes, evoking spider’s webs, muscular ligaments, twisting spirals of DNA. Depending on the way the light falls as you move around these constructions, they can dominate the room like power lines or appear almost invisible. The effect is to invoke string music, giving the sculpture a hallucinatory quality.

Kate Terry’s style has been described as baroque minimalism, recalling the constrained aesthetics of Donald Judd or the ‘intuitive’ minimalism or Richard Tuttle’s 1970s wire pieces. Terry herself cites the DIY craft movement as having as much of an influence on her as formal Minimalism.

Since completing an MA at the University of Guelph, Canada, she has shown widely in Canada and London where she lives, most recently at Shadow Boxing at Home House, A Life of Their Own at Castle Arts, Lismore, Ireland, Heart of Glass at the Shoreditch Town Hall.

Starting 2010 with this diverse and unique approach Matteblak is carving a niche for themselves within the field of construction, architecture and design.

The next project... will see Matteblak working in collaboration with cutting - edge international architects, to create a series of modular restaurants across London. Inspired by the original Ramen eateries of Japan, these restaurants will be minimal and metronomic, an architectural exercise in ergonomic simplicity.