Nimbus — Chrome-Paint Cartoon Whippet, Hotel Arrival, Dubai

This is the piece people assume is metal. It is not. Nimbus is a fibreglass sculpture with a mirror-chrome paint over it, and the difference matters to anyone who has to live with the object outdoors in the Gulf.

Why chrome paint rather than steel

Real polished stainless in a Dubai arrival court is a maintenance commitment: salt air, dust and forty-degree sun turn a mirror finish into a smeared one, and the reflectivity drops. A chrome-effect automotive coating over a laminated shell gives the same optical effect in a much lighter, repairable object. The hotel can wash it, and if a panel is ever damaged it can be repainted on site.

The whippet as a mirror

The breed was the client’s choice and, as it turned out, the right one for the finish. A whippet is almost entirely long curves with very few flat planes, and a reflective surface on a curve produces a long stretched reflection instead of a hard image. That is why the piece reads as palms and sky at a distance and only resolves into a dog as you get close to it.

We exaggerated the shoulder arch and the length of the muzzle, and shortened the body so it stays a cartoon. Everything else is the breed.

Getting a chrome finish that survives

The shell was blocked and primed to a higher standard than any other piece we have made, because a mirror coating has nowhere to hide a defect. The chrome base was sprayed in a dust-controlled booth, then sealed under a high-gloss clear coat with a UV package. Unsealed chrome paint oxidises within a season in that climate; sealed, it holds.

In the arrival court

It stands at the edge of the water channel where it catches both the palms and the moving reflection off the water. At midday it almost vanishes; at sunset it is the brightest object in the court. The hotel has started lighting it from below after dark, which we did not spec and would now recommend to anyone.