#HTE

Gravity-Defying Marble Tables That Lean Like the Tower of Pisa

Marble is an ancient material that has come back into style in home interiors in the past few years, used in kitchens and bathrooms; mixed with contrasting materials such as brass and copper in contemporary coffee tables and light fixtures; and used as a pattern in trompe l’oeil marble pillows, wallpaper, and more.

Now Oki Sato of prolific, award-winning Japanese design studio Nendo—known for reinventing such everyday banalities as chocolate bars, rubber bands, and standard house doors—has challenged the cold, hard, heavy, monumental properties associated with marble to create a set of black and white gravity-defying tables with tipsy leaning legs that give them a surreal air.

Nendo designed the tables for a black-and-white exhibition space for Italian company Marsotto Edizioni as part of the upcoming Milan Design Week 2016. Marsotto Edizioni is an Italian brand specializing in marble furniture “that combines ancient manual techniques with an innovative production system,” Nendo said in a project description. “The ‘weight’ of marble is often perceived as a negative factor, but this element has been actively exploited, resulting in the creation of a table that is tilted to one side.”

How do those tipsy marble legs manage to lean like the Tower of Pisa and not fall? “The table is precisely stable due to the weight of the leg section,” Nendo said, “and its appearance of instability in turn provides a new expression of ‘agility’ to the marble.”