Mensa6 is a table with a 6mm-thick table top and only four separate pieces. The minimal construction comes from designer Michael Schougaard Svane, whose passion for simplicity has earned him a Reddot design award. The construction of Mensa6 achieves maximum strength and sustainability by using minimal materials.

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The wood and aluminum Bachag chair, crafted and designed by Korean designer Joong Ho Choi, was a part of the iDEALGRAPHY project, which asked designers to create mix and match style within furnitures and fashion. It was aimed to show the contrasts between the two ways of designing, and how their marriage could bring about a balanced final product.

Choi says the Bachag chair “was designed to express structures and usability  to provide comfort and unity , and when you sit in it, it’s as if you’re wearing a designer handbag.”

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The Minneapolis Institute of The Arts (MIA) is showing an exhibit on modern design through September 11, featuring design and designers from the post-World War II era to the present. From the museum:

American and European designers over the last six decades have explored abstraction of form, new technologies, new materials, and adventurous colors in items for household use. This exhibition focuses on these developments through over thirty examples of furniture, industrial design, jewelry, and other consumer objects, including notable recent acquisitions. Works by Americans Charles and Ray Eames, Harry Bertoia, Frank Gehry, and Michael Graves, as well as Europeans Eero Aarnio, Piero Fornasetti, and Jens Quistgaard, are among the designers included.

Minneapolis Institute of the Arts
2400 3rd Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55404-3506

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Japanese artisti Shinobu Koizumi designed “Light in a Drawer,” inspired by fairy tales with hidden treasures and dreamy illuminations.

Each drawer is made of frosted acrylic with a wooden front facade, and the lights are installed at the back of the drawers. The plastic construction means the light can be seen peeking from around the sides of each box, even if the drawer is shut. Further playing into the whimsical ideas of surrounding light, the handles are composed of the bases of electric light bulbs.

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Stockholm-based design Studio Note designed the Boet Stools with the idea of trees and birds nests in mind. “Boet” literally translates to “nest” in Swedish, and according to the designer, the stools embody “birds’ home among the trees; elevated, protected, carried by a strong tree, you find the soft, rounded shape of the nest” at the top.

The base of the stool is made from metal and the seat is crafted from cork. The Boet Stools come in different height levels and color options. Each model will be shown for the first time at the COUPLICITE exhibition during Maison et Objet in Paris 2011.

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Spanish designer Tomás Alonso, part of London-based Okay Studeio, named the Mushiki Storage System after the Japanse word for “steaming vessel.” The table’s shape and functionality is modeled after the stackable bamboo components of the steaming vessel’s design.

“Available in two sizes, each round structure features a column with a wooden hinge running along it, which allows various modules to be stacked, rotated and opened.  Like many of alonso’s designs, these tables combine simple elements to render more complex structures, enabling users to adjust its movable components to explore proportion and spatial relationships. with a strong emphasis on how humans relate to the products.”

via gradient mag

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When Gustav Segerstéen envisioned his “Take on Nature” sofa, he imagined the unity that occurs between two people when they start living together or get married. The separate parties usually merge their “stuff”, exemplifying the “two become one” concept associated with couples or spouses. Segerstéen materialized this concept with his “Take on Nature Sofa,” which comes from the idea of two chairs becoming one sofa.

““I wanted the sofa to look unfinished and chose a stage where it would look the most interesting,” Segerstéen tells Co.Design. “I imagine it growing into a more common-looking sofa, with another chair growing as a new family member arrives.”

The designer also included a drink tray on one of the armrests, and a reading light, with the electrical cord winding extending over the back of the sofa.

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Arriving in pops of neon hues and a choice of different materials, the Anouk chair by Karim Azzabi is a bright and modern edition to the Italian furniture firm Artflex. Azzabi designed the chair using the basic structure of a continuously folded tube, which can be covered with fabric, leather, plexiglass or plastic tubing depending on a buyers personal aesthetic tastes. Available for purchase here.

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First shown at ICFF, James DeWulf’s Harvest Table is made of fiber reinforced concrete and features a round top that is only one inch thick and a powder coated steel base inspired by the harvest symbol. Put in perspective, the top is nearly nine times thinner than ordinary concrete would have to be to equal it in strength and durability.

Like most DeWulf’s designs, the Harvest Table is  impervious to the wear and tear of harsh weather conditions, which opens up the option of using the table as an outdoor piece.

Custom colors are available.

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The latest from Brooklyn-based designer Emily Vislocky are a provocative (literally) pair of tables titled “Poke & Squeeze.” The set of tables, which she calls “uncomfortably anthropomorphic,” fit together in a way much like humans do in a purely physical way. The drawer fronts are made from flexible dip-molded pastic, and “beckon users to engage with surprisingly, and, perhaps uncomfortably, human-like interface.”

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