Designer Steven Haulenbeek Turns Functional Objects Into Physical Records of Ice, Sand, Fire, and Serendipity

Steven Haulenbeek, an American artist and industrial designer who turns unpredictable natural processes into collectible furniture, lighting, and sculptural objects. His best-known works use carved ice and molten bronze, or reclaimed foundry sand and resin, so that weather, gravity, heat, texture, and chance become co-authors of the final design.

Haulenbeek’s signature Ice-Cast Bronze process began in 2011. He carves or shapes blocks of ice, pours molten wax into their cavities or lets it run freely across frozen surfaces, and uses the resulting wax forms in a lost-wax bronze-casting process. The ice melts away, but its ridges, bubbles, cracks, and irregularities remain translated into bronze.

The method turns something temporary into something enduring. An ice formation that would normally disappear in hours becomes the textured surface of a mirror, side table, lighting piece, vessel, or sculpture. Because the ice never behaves exactly the same way twice, each piece carries a distinct record of the moment and material conditions that produced it.

More: Instagram