Articles, Featured Articles

My daily surfing of the web and design websites brought to the forefront a very interesting piece by Lazerian Design Studio of Manchester.  They have been experimenting with form using plywood, a material not known for its flexibility with form (although to be fair, there are some terrific examples of beautiful work done with plywood).  The results of their experimentation, seems to have hit upon a creative nerve that is garnering a fair bit of attention.  They have married a fairly old material, with the relatively new technology that is CNC and have combined that with relatively simple or primitive interlocking / connecting methods.  The connections range from simple bolt and nuts to interlocking pieces, but the simplicity of the joints and the sheer honesty with which they are put on display helps sell the piece as a whole.

What makes this piece so admirable, and indeed desirable, is the focus that is brought to the simple, but extremely elegant form that makes up the support columns or base.  There has been some criticism of the glass top being too simple and not fitting the aesthetic of the support, however I think almost any other option would be taking the attention away from the real star of the product, the support column.  The glass top affords the product the ‘honest’ quality that it is oozing with, and closing the top off and removing that quality would be doing a disservice to the product as a whole.

The Mensa Collection comes in three different table sizes, one being a low table, a medium height smaller table, and a tall table.  While the proportions of the medium table seem a bit off, as it almost appears chubby and stout, the resultant beauty is not really tarnished because of it.  Through their research, Lazerian Studios has managed to create a modular plywood birch form that is capable of actually supporting the weight that these tables would normally require.  The extremely raw aesthetic and approach to the design belies the current technology required to make it come to life, and the gelling of the two is what allows the product to resonate so much.