Tables to Commingle

Like other designers in an increasingly green-conscious industry, Norman Diekman’s furnishings are inspired by nature. He says he got the idea for these low sculptural tables from a cluster of tree stumps he saw while walking around New York’s Fire Island. He said they appeared to be in conversation, and he devised the group to reflect the connection and acknowledges a debt to Louis Kahn’s Fisher house. “It gave me the idea of things meeting on the corner,” he said. “Expressing a corner! What a beautiful concept.” Although the pieces appear rectilinear, you realize the planes are subtly tilted and each can interface with the others in various configurations. Diekman’s optimum installation involves mixing several in the widely divergent finishes available: copper, aluminum, high-gloss paint, an embossed wood, and SensiTile, a terrazzo embedded with a pattern formed by a matrix of fiber-optic “pipes” that changes when touched.