Architizer feature: How "Lord of The Rings" Chainmail was transformed into an innovative Architectural Mesh.
Extract: There’s something about architectural mesh that makes a building look incredibly covert and cutting edge, like the architecture found in a sci-fi film. But such a building-product isn’t only aesthetically impactful — it can form a highly functional and sustainable building envelope, softening the edges of hard urban spaces at the same time.
Kaynemaile has worked tirelessly to perfect the material science behind beautiful architectural mesh, collaborating with architects and designers on projects that embolden urban environments with positive buildings. The company’s patented polycarbonate mesh, inspired by 2,000-year-old medieval chainmail, was initially created for the armor and weapons seen in the The Lord of The Rings movie trilogy and is now used on major architectural projects around the world.
The film’s art director and Kaynemaile’s founder Kayne Horsham worked with his team to construct each garment from plastic plumbing tubes, coating them in pure silver. Once filming wrapped, Horsham dedicated himself to creating a change to the liquid state assembly process to mass produce the polycarbonate chainmail for architectural applications — products that were light, but strong enough to protect the interior or exterior of a building. Now an industry-leading manufacturer, Kaynemaile produces mesh for everything from small interior screens to large scale exterior façades. Their mesh is easy to install and can be custom created for specialized applications.
