Ping pong tables seem to be having a moment. What was once a gaming set-up hidden away in the basement for the occasional game or two around holidays when family get-togethers run rampant and often, is now taking the front seat in office design. I even took a spin on a concrete version being shown at last week’s ICFF. The You and Me table is the perfect solution for those offices looking for a completely functional work space with a “members only” way to solve all of those tough corporate decisions over an after hours game of ping pong.
The table—thoughtfully designed by the Antoni Pallejá Office for RS Barcelona—features a discrete side drawer that houses the paddles, balls and net. When it’s closed, there’s no trace of the table’s alternative—and I’m willing to bet, more popular—use.
In the late 1950’s, a swiveling star was born—or rather, designed. Furniture designer and architect Gianfranco Frattini created a revolving bookcase that not only gave books a home, but was fit for displaying other decorative belongings, as well. Now Poltrona Frau has taken Frattini’s lead and recreated the much-loved bookcase with few modifications—hey, timeless design is considered such for a reason—naming it “Albero,” which means “tree” in Italian. After discovering the ROOM Collection last week, all kinds of customizable furniture systems have been catching my eye—this one included.
Frau’s reintroduction of the design is a reminder that vintage furniture doesn’t have to be overused (or used at all), kitschy or “retro.” The bookcase’s customization and easy use that made it so popular in the first place continues to ring true in today’s world where tiny urban apartments and homes are far too common.
While there are many designs out there that look to replicate the iconic style of the Eames Chair, I’d bet that there aren’t many doing it quite like Bora Hong. Her work always has some sort of cultural connection, and her recent design series, “Cosmetic Surgery Kingdom” is no exception. The cultural spin? Hong explores the aesthetic surgery trend in South Korea by recreating the classic Eames chair using parts of outdated chair designs. She showcases her design process in two videos, where she dons doctor’s scrubs and a hospital mask for added effect:
The project is meant to draw a correlation between the goal of creating a younger and more beautiful self by means of cosmetic surgery and the way in which designers are also always trying to create “good design.” Check out her second video, titled “Surgery for an Eames Chair”:
In college, I became the master of bin organizing. I’d stack towers of those black and blue mailing bins—you know, the ones where you’ll win a hefty fine if you’re caught snagging them in public— until they haphazardly leaned forward, compromising my coveted DVD collection. I would’ve loved to get my hands on a system like this. Part functional and part artsy conversation starter, the ROOM Collection Furniture System by Erik Olovsson & Kyuhyung Cho lets you create your own structure from 25 different pieces.
Each cut-out block has been inspired by a different object’s shape and, as you can see from the photos, the whimsical countours welcome all kinds of household storage/display space, from morning coffee mugs and lamps to bottles of wine and shoes. The designers explain: “Each block was inspired by specific objects, creating various shapes and sizes. The round for wine, zigzag for phones, tablets and laptops, or peaked for an open book. Each block can be a room to invite any object, the composition is unlimited.”
Here’s an interesting design challenge that extends beyond the design of the object you’re trying to get into people’s homes: Imagine you and your team have designed your thing, whatever it may be, and have engineered the parts to be manufacturable. Now you have to design an additional line of objects that people can use to assemble the initial object with complete precision.
That’s the challenge faced by companies like Häfele, Hettich and Blum, as the fittings they devise in their respective studios must be physically installed at the end-user’s location by a legion of independent tradespeople. While Ikea handles this by using simple designs, knockdown screws, cam nuts and black-and-white illustrations that any idjit can follow, the fixtures by the previous three companies—just look at Blum’s Legrabox, for instance—require ultra-precise assembly by a professional in order to function properly. And because most European cabinetry is made from melamine-covered particle board, there’s no margin for error: Holes must be drilled perfectly perpendicular and at the correct depth on the very first try, as there’s no patching up marred laminate and shredded screw holes.
So we found Blum’s side booth at Holz-Handwerk pretty fascinating, since it was aimed not at consumers or designers but at the tool-toting tradespeople who will be installing Blum’s designs in their own clients’ homes. Blum has produced a line of drilling machines, assembly rigs and clever jigs, along with CG videos, that tradesfolk can use to get everything together. And these assembly devices, which will never be seen by the general public, are all beautifully designed in their own right. Here’s their drilling jig for installing cabinet door dampers, either into the edge of the cabinet wall or affixed to the side of it:
This jig for drilling mounting plates uses a simple trick that carpenters who’ve ever drilled holes for shelf pins will recognize: A metal pin, placed into the first hole, ensures the second will be precisely spaced.
Austria-based hardware manufacturer Blum might make the low-end hinges for Ikea’s cabinets, but when it comes to their own branded product, they go for the top of the market. At Holz-Handwerk Blum was showing off their sexy Legrabox, a drawer system that provides the strength of heavy-duty drawer slides—offering both 40kg and 70kg capacities, or about 88 to 154 pounds—with the added touch that you don’t have to see the darn things when the drawers are open, as they’re completely concealed.
And despite the sides being sheathed in stainless steel (with an optional anti-fingerprint matte coating), each drawer side is just 12.8 millimeters thick!
In addition to living spaces, Häfele is also addressing is the design of kitchens, which they see as areas that need to “look good and meet the highest individual requirements for functionality and ergonomics.” At Holz-Handwerk they demonstrated a variety of kitchen and dining pieces that used to be static–tabletops, cabinetry, stovetops—but that are now rendered free to move, slide and hide via Haäfele’s fancy hardware. Have a look:
Häfele is a German manufacturer of furniture fittings and architectural hardware, and of all the booths we saw at Holz-Handwerk, theirs was the most mobbed. And it’s no wonder why: Aimed at the designers and builders responsible for kitting out homes and offices, their sprawling exhibit was a showcase of what it’s possible to make with their products, a sort of vision of our domestic future—and one that’s attainable right now, as all of the hardware exists.
In Häfele’s vision, storage furniture is not a boring bunch of static objects; rather, everything transforms to serve us in kinetically exciting ways, shifting, flipping and sliding at the touch of a finger, either via tiny hidden motors or cleverly designed and invisible mechanical fixtures. We snuck in early one morning before the crowds got there to show you:
Self-proclaimed “furniture technology” company Hettich makes the clever, mostly unseen hardware that makes cool furniture work: Hinges, handles, drawer slides and door hardware, including a lot of stuff that closes itself after you give it a push. If that doesn’t sound sexy, you need to see and touch their wares in person; but for those that cannot, we like the four-pronged approach the company is taking to popularize their products from afar.
First off they hope to draw consumers in with short, sweet videos showing their systems in action, like their SlideLine M sliding door system:
If you’re a furniture builder who likes the vacuum clamping set-ups we looked at, but don’t have the four- and five-figure budgets to add them to your own shop, there are lower-cost alternatives. Schmalz is a Germany-based global company that’s been in the vacuum technology game for some 30 years, and they manufacture everything from high-end vacuum clamping tables used in CNC operations to small desktop units. Their Multi-Clamp VC-M is the entry-level product, aimed at the lone tradesperson who wants to bolt it to their own workbench in place of a vise.
The benefits of vacuum-clamping versus a vise or mechanical clamping are manifold: You don’t need to take any protective measures to shield the piece from the vise’s jaws or the clamp surfaces, you can get at five sides of a piece at once, and the articulating nature of the clamp means you can quickly reposition the piece—for example, to go from sanding the face to one of the edges—without having to unclamp and reclamp. And the second-tier version of the VC-M can not only be tilted, but rotated and swiveled as well.
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Photos by Gustav Almestal
