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Homesuper materialsCork: The Super Raw Material that is Part of Portugal Heritage
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Cork: The Super Raw Material that is Part of Portugal Heritage

As you may know, ARCHYI. team works from Portugal, in an area that is traditionally known by producing cork. And, as cork is part of our heritage, we find quite interesting that this extraordinary raw material has been around us for so long, and its potential still seems to be growing year after year.

Even though it is not common knowledge, Cork’s history kind of mixes itself with the history of Mankind. Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Persians and other ancient civilizations discovered cork potential ages ago and made a multitude of everyday objects from oak bark. Cork was used in shoes, buoys and fishing equipment long before – about 3000 years before – Christ was even born and it was already used to insulate the cells of convents from the cold and humidity centuries ago.

An important historical resource

Remains from artifacts, such as floats, stoppers for casks, women’s footwear and roofing materials dating from the 4th century BC, were found in Italy. It was also around that period that one of the first references to the cork oak was made by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus amazed with to “the ability that this tree has to renew its bark after it has been removed”. And in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Portuguese used it in the ships that led to the discovery of the “New World”.

But the most iconic use of cork throughout history is associated with wine. Since the moment that man started to produce and to consume wine, cork became the perfect raw material to seal the wine in recipients, conserving its properties. In the 18th century, the production of cork stoppers became the main goal and the systematic cultivation of the great cork forests can still be found nowadays in Catalonia and Portugal.

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Although the natural cork stopper is still today preferred by the great wine producers, it was also in the 18th century that the monk Dom Pierre Pérignon began to use cork to seal bottles of his famous champagne Dom Pérignon. All the other renowned French champagne producer, like Ruinart, Moët et Chandon followed his move. And they are all still using natural cork stoppers to this day.

Cork

The 21st century, was particularly rich for cork in the field of new applications. For centuries it seemed to be kind of forgotten and widely used in kitchen and office appliances.

Suddenly, cork starts surprising fashion, sports, transport, construction, and decoration industries. Used in NASA shuttles and the ESA spacecraft, in top competition kayaks, in tennis and cricket balls.

Some Hollywood movies, use cork for special effects, and explosion wrecks. It is used by international award-winning designers, on the world’s most expensive whiskey and it still walks around on the feet of a lot of people.

A Portuguese heritage that makes us proud

It is written in cork’s history its close relationship to our home country, Portugal.

Portugal has the largest cork oak forest in the world and is by far the planet’s largest manufacturer of cork products.

APCOR, the Portuguese Cork Association was created in 1956 and has been one of the great contributors to cork promotion inside and outside Portuguese borders.

A Portuguese whistler cork oak tree was recently distinguished as the European tree of the year and this event was widely commented and applauded by all Portuguese. Planted 234 years ago in Alentejo, this magnificent tree is the world’s largest, oldest cork tree, and it was honored with this prize during an event of the Environmental Partnership Association (EPA). A symbolic yet very important prize because it helps to promote an active forest management and the Portuguese cork industry.

In recent years, many Portuguese architects have been exploring this material as a cladding, and it is becoming more and more popular around the world.

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Projects like the Portuguese pavilion in the Hanover Expo 2000 by Álvaro Siza & Eduardo Souto de Moura – using cork blocks to build a façade – and more recently, the Portuguese Pavilion in the Expo Shanghai – which was entirely covered in cork panels and won a design award – are also key for promoting the use of cork around the world.

What really makes Cork so special

Well, cork is an amazing 100% natural material, made from the bark of Cork Oak trees. Collected every 9 years, transformed – a process is free of any artificial chemicals – and adapted to several different uses.

Cork has been used in construction for ages because it is a great thermal insulating material, but strangely, materials like the Insulation Cork Board (ICB) still seem to be poorly known amongst professionals working on sustainable and zero carbon projects.

Cork retains an elevated portion of CO2 during its life and requires very low energy to be transformed, making it an excellent cradle-to-cradle material.cork-eco-friendly-material-time-resistant

Also extremely resistant to insects, the most extraordinary thing about cork is that it maintains its qualities over time. Almost twenty years ago a large cold store built in 1969 in the north of Portugal, where cork was used for thermal insulation, was dismantled. As the cork recovered it was in perfect conditions to be recycled to produce new cork-based materials. It is noteworthy to say that the cork was later analyzed in a laboratory and had it was exactly as new cork, which means that the use overtime doesn’t diminish cork’s original qualities!

So cork is perfect for environmental-friendly products, more than adequate for green or zero carbon projects as cladding material since it naturally comes with a final guaranty of total reuse at the end of the building life-cycle.

ARCHYI.’s cork design solutions

Taking advantage of our manufacturing know-how, the result of Bi-silque’s almost 40 years of experience transforming, customizing, and sculpting cork, ARCHYI. launched itself into the market offering collaborative workspace design solutions with cork. The Ripple Cork Tile can be used to customize décor while insulating spaces. On top of that, this eco-friendly product with natural sound absorption and thermal properties can also be used as decor or a push-pin bulletin surface, which is rather handy when it comes to workspaces.  Ripple Cork Tiles enables to customize entire walls. Due to its texture, it is easy to cut, and it exists in a beautiful color pallet that allows anyone using it to get completely creative in its application.

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Combining functionality and visual appeal, the Tile Notice Board is the other star cork solution on ARCHYI.’s portfolio. Manufactured by experts, it is a cork surface frameless tile that can be mounted vertically or horizontally, as a single board or in a small ensemble, seamlessly side by side or – even better – tiled to cover an entire or partial wall. An innovative solution to create a top quality natural cork wall of your chosen size and layout, covering large areas or drawing creative patterns.

 

As cork is a high-quality natural surface with self-healing and resilient properties that can always be of extremely good use with push pins to share information. Simple and stylish, we are sure that this super and timeless material will continue to inspire ARCHYI. team and the rest of the world for many more centuries to come.

 

 

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