A useful curl
Heatwave gives the radiator an unexpected place in a room. Its scrolling outline belongs to the object doing the heating, so decoration becomes a way of shaping a utilitarian surface. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen explains the design through that relationship between ornament and heat transfer.1
A flat cover would conceal the ordinary radiator behind another object. Here the curling form is the thing to notice. The outline spreads over the wall and leaves spaces within it, making the surrounding wall part of the visual composition.
That relationship changes how the object can be read. Follow a curl and the eye moves between solid surface and open space. A piece of household equipment acquires the kind of silhouette usually associated with decoration.
From a student's model to JAGA
The High Museum identifies its 2003 prototype as part of Laarman's graduate project, Reinventing Functionality. He made that model by hand in fibre-reinforced concrete, steel and plumbing parts. It gave an idea about form and use a physical object through which to develop it.2
The museum also holds a different Heatwave, dated 2007. That record names JAGA as manufacturer and lists polymer concrete with steel plumbing parts. JAGA is Belgian; Laarman's Dutch authorship and the manufacturer's identity are distinct parts of the story.3
The two objects make the move from experiment to manufacture tangible. The graduate model and the later product can share an idea while the material account changes.
Giving equipment a presence
Heatwave's lasting question is spatial: how much attention should a useful fixture receive? A radiator occupies wall space whether or not anyone finds it beautiful. Laarman's design uses that unavoidable presence as the starting point for an ornamental arrangement.
The curls also make the object's purpose a subject of conversation. Their surface participates in the museum's explanation of heating.
A room needs heat, and it has walls that people see every day. Heatwave brings those two ordinary facts into the same outline. The useful fixture becomes one of the things that gives the room its character.
