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The Fashion Center Information Kiosk in New York's Garment District. (Photo by Peter Margonelli) |
| "The goal is to make something appear like 'Of course, it couldn't
look any other way,'" Cosman says. by Olivia Snaije When the 34-foot steel button-and-needle sculpture popped up on the Fashion Center Information Kiosk in New York's garment district last year, it was much admired, but few thought about how it was made. Pentagram Architectural Services had passed along its design to fabricator Hugh Cosman, who was then given four months to manufacture the button and needle. Fabricators are alchemists of sorts, working alongside designers, calculating, drafting, and then mixing materials to produce what the designer has sketched on a piece of paper. "The whole idea is to take a designer's drawing and make sense of it," says Cosman. His Encore Metal Arts company in Brooklyn is just a year old, but he is already working at a frenetic pace, churning out--among other things--sleek, stainless-steel fixtures for Donna Karan boutiques. Making sense out of drawings is not always easy, since designers often don't know their materials and pay little attention to detail, Cosman says. But what really irks him is the lack of harmony between design and the industrial process in the United States. Cosman is a first-generation American whose father was a metallurgist and whose grandfather had a specialty forge in Germany; you might say he has a sixth sense about metal. His biggest influence, he says, comes from the Werkbund, a German industrial design organization whose dictum is Sachlichkeit, or functionalism. "The goal is to make something appear like 'Of course, it couldn't look any other way,' " Cosman says. Although he was always a closet engineer, Cosman majored in history at Vassar, because, he confides, "I'm really not that good at math." Eventually his feeling for metal got the better of him, and he spent 14 years working with an architectural metal shop before stepping out on his own. Besides providing beautifully worked fixtures for many Seventh Avenue boutiques, Cosman recently completed 15 poolside tables in sandblasted steel for Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer. Along with two partners, he is also developing a line of contemporary furniture in stainless steel and brass. "I like the fact that there's no ambiguity in my work," he says with a grin. "You either get it right or wrong. Working in 3-D is unforgiving." |
Keywords:
Fashion Institute of Technology, Hugh Cosman, fabricator, metals
