Napa artist Gordon Huether was commissioned to create a sculpture for the exterior of a new customer center for Arburg, a global manufacturer of injection moulding machines for plastics in Lossburg, Germany.

The spherical form was created to provide a complementary contrast to the building’s stacked rectangles while symbolizing the company’s global reach. The range of colors throughout the form were used to reflect Arburg’s ability to create products with a wide range of colors. The sculpture is fabricated from stainless steel, pulled art glass rods, optically perfect Pyrex and dichroic glass.

The dichroic effect was generated by evaporating layers of transparent dielectric materials of differing refractive index to precisely controlled microscopic thicknesses. A specific wavelength range of the visible light spectrum is reflected from the dichroic surface and the remainder is transmitted through the substrate. Since the evaporated materials are transparent, the light is not absorbed as with pigments and paints, creating uniquely crisp and vibrant colors.

Light transmitted through the dichroic surface will appear one color and light reflected from it will appear as a complementary color. As the angle at which the dichroic is viewed changes, the color that is transmitted and reflected also changes.