2021 — THE FASCINATION WITH TITANIUM
The story of WHITE CIRCLE began in 2021 with curiosity.
We were speaking with friends working as engineers in the aerospace industry, designing mechanical components for satellites and protective titanium covers for systems operating in environments almost impossible to imagine: extreme cold, extreme heat, and the absolute vacuum of space.
They spoke about the demands placed on these structures: extraordinary strength, dimensional stability, resistance to extreme temperatures, and surfaces so smooth and precise that they could function alongside sensitive avionics.
We became fascinated.
If titanium could be engineered to perform under the most extreme conditions humans have created, how far could we transform it for something as delicate and intimate as eyewear?
Could we cold-roll it? How many pressing phases would be necessary?
What would happen under heavy rotation? Could we manipulate its metastability? Could directional pressing control the material's flow? What would happen to compression, dislocation density and springback? Could we understand and control titanium's natural resistance to deformation—and force a solid block of this extraordinarily resilient material into the precise architecture of an eyewear frame?
Then came the bigger question:How do you design the architecture of the process itself?
Which sequence should come first? What could be eliminated? What had to be added?
Cold rolling? Incremental cold bending? Stage forming? Orbital or radial pressing? Flexible or fluid forming? How many steps would be necessary? How complex could the process become?
Could we cold-form the titanium, heat it under controlled conditions, press it again, anneal it in vacuum, recrystallize its structure, and progressively refine the material until its surface became almost mirror-like?
And, finally, could this highly engineered titanium body become the foundation for something as uncompromising as a three-tone 24K gold finish?
There were no easy answers.
And so the adventure began.
We entered the world of titanium metallurgy: cold rolling, controlled pressure, directional material flow, master tooling for multiple pressing stages, heat annealing in vacuum, recrystallization, shrinkage, thermal expansion, dislocation density, springback—and an endless succession of technical questions that had to be solved along the way.
Phase by phase, experiment by experiment, we searched for a material body that could become ever denser, ever smoother, ever stronger and capable of increasingly complex geometry.
We were no longer simply making an eyewear frame.
We were learning how to transform titanium itself.
What began as a conversation about aerospace engineering became an obsession with titanium metallurgy—and with the question of what this extraordinary material could become when approached without conventional limitations.
The fascination had begun.
And then in December 2023, after years of experimentation, the first finished WHITE CIRCLE finally arrived.
It was no longer an experiment.
It was an object. OBJET d' ART.
A solid 6 mm block of titanium, transformed through pressure, heat, tooling and recrystallization into something that had never existed before.
A few weeks later, at MIDO in February 2024 in Milan, we showed WHITE CIRCLE to our first friends and clients.The reaction confirmed what we had begun to understand during the years of experimentation:
This was not simply a new eyewear frame.
It was the beginning of a new material language.
And the story of WHITE CIRCLE continues.
