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Douglas Fanning talks about the Ori table for his DYAD studio.
By Paul Makovsky
November 2002
Douglas Fanning (b. 1967) graduated with degrees in architecture from the
University of Maryland (B.S., 1990) and Columbia University (M.Arch., 1994).
He opened his own design studio in 1994, and went on to design furniture
and displays for Gucci and prototype furnishings for Donna Karan. Aside
from designing sets for the Dance Kumikokimoto and Wally Cardona Quartet
dance companies in New York, he is currently developing a set of stools
and other pieces to go with the Ori table.
Douglas Fanning has always been frustrated that tables are invariably designed
either as a simple rectangle supported by legs at four corners or as a circle
or other shape on a center post. In designing his own tables, Fanning has
played with the idea that the surface of a table and its structure should
be synonymous, and he has achieved this by cantilevering or supporting his
tables in surprising new ways. So when I heard that Fanning was finishing
his new Ori table, I was curious to see what exactly it would look like.
He was glad to talk about it, and it makes its debut here in Metropolis.
Working in fiberglass expressed the fluidity of the piece really
well. It's basically a rectangle with four dropped corners. For such a simple
idea, it still has an iconic and graphic presence.
It's 46 inches square, but we can make it up to 60 inches square, which
is really massive. The center is always within reach when you are seated,
so what happens in front of you, like having tea or a bowl of udon,
is the essential thing going on. Utensils and glasses could be placed on
the lower edges. |
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At first I developed a low table for a very small setting, at 16 inches
high. I then thought it would be wise to develop it as a café table,
at 29 inches high, which I think is its true essence.
The Ori table is available in a red high-gloss finish but can be custom-built
in any color. |
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It's called Ori, which loosely means folded cloth in Japanese. I
started out with the idea of a tea table. In a Japanese tea ceremony
people sit next to a long table, and a blanket is draped above them and
the table. The idea that the table is a blanket and moves over the body
was my inspiration. I considered calling it Cross, because it is one in
a series of cross-shaped tables I've designed, as well as Formula One,
because of its red color. But the idea of cloth seemed to grab what it
really was about, and so Ori stuck. |
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Café Table
Height: 29 in.
Width: 46 in.
Length: 46 in.
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Tea Table
Height: 16 in.
Width: 46 in.
Length: 46 in.
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The first time I sketched it out, it was complete. I worked some of
the details out in foam core. Then I made a large cardboard model and lived
with that for a while. I then worked with Seal Fiberglass, an incredible
company, to figure out all the details in fiberglass. The table
is actually tooled in a traditional way by a carpenter. Then with a three-eighths-inch
balsa core, the fiberglass is laid in and finished. |
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The biggest challenge was trying to work with the idea of the table wrapping
the body and keeping those curves. I played with pushing and pulling the
top about an inch versus the corner, and the lengths--things like that. |
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Trying to keep it thin was also challenging. We figured out on our
first attempt that we could make it at three-quarters of an inch thick
without a problem. Visually, though, it would have lost its clothlike floating
quality, so that was not an option. We built up a balsa core, checked for
any deflection, and eventually worked it so that we could get it rigid
at a half-inch thick. |
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