Posts

The Mobius coffee table is almost a sculpture. For Kristalia, we wanted something quite unconventional that still followed the logic of the research into the design of matter. We started off with a plain sheet of metal, a strip of folded metal that created this 3D shape that is quite mysterious in the sense that, being continuous and creating a sort of endless Mobius strip (this is where it got its name from) it isn’t easy to understand how it is made. In fact, we didn’t know how we would make it either, in the sense that we liked this clean, very rational shape although it was so sculpturally different from other Kristalia products. We contacted many, different, potential suppliers to make this product. All but one said it was impossible to make it because it required too costly equipment and moulds with the risk of not succeeding anyway. At last, we found the right one, a supplier who believed in our project and solved the problems. We had a first prototype made which wasn’t exactly perfect but it was on the right track. We showed it to Ruggero and decided to go ahead. This is how this minimalist coffee table was born: it can stand in the living room or beside the sofa just as it is or with the addition of a glass top. We decided to make it in two colours only: black and white. It is a continuous, three-dimensional shape that is made from 4 segments welded together and polished to look like an uninterrupted band. We started off with a very simple material, a sheet of metal, both because we were already in contact with a supplier and because it seemed to us to be the most suitable material to make the product out of. Its very sculptural shape made the company decide to offer it in two versions, a smaller and a larger one, with and without a top. We still like it very much, we have not tired of it which is a good sign; personally, I prefer it without a top, pure, just like we designed it and I find that it still looks good in the Kristalia catalogue. We can say that this was one of the first products we designed in our technological research into materials and technology. We are fond of it because we started from there and it brought us luck.