Milan 08: Italian brand Magis will show Piggyback, a stacking table system by British designer Thomas Heatherwick, at the Milan Furniture Fair this coming week.
Magis asked Heatherwick to design a dividable domestic table and "the result was a table which literally ‘piggybacks’ its twin," according to Heatherwick's studio. "A grove and slot system has been designed so that when the two tables are on top of each other they seem to fuse to create a single table."
See a couple of renderings of how the tables slot together in our earlier story.
Photos are by Tom Vack.
Here's a statement from Magis founder Eugenio Perazza:
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PIGGYBACK
Each company, or almost each one, has its own plastic chair in its collection.
Even companies producing armchairs and sofas have their own plastic chair.
Even companies producing wood chairs have their own plastic chair.
It seems a plastic chair is the object that cannot be omitted from companies’ collections.
It does business.
According to me this represents, on the other hand, evidence of companies’ incapability to find new project ideas in the area of their own core business.
The same can also be said of extending tables.
Each company has one of them. Or almost each one.
Now also Magis has its own extending table in its collection.
An extending table is for sure very useful.
For most of the time the table is used in its reduced dimension, until some friends come for dinner and you have to extend the table to make room for everybody.
Now let’s imagine a group made of five children, two men and two women around the extended table.
A realistic situation.
The adults lead the discussion, but also have to pay attention to how to lead it, as children are listening to their words.
And children, on the other hand, are sitting down bored and deprived of any discussion or play initiative.
Wouldn’t this situation be solved, if it could be possible to split the table in two parts, one for the adults and the other for the children, a little further on?
Magis proposes its solution with Piggyback: two rectangular tables with the same dimensions in one.
One on top of the other.
A project developed by Magis with Thomas Heatherwick, a young and ingenious British designer.
When placed one on top of the other, they seem to be a unique table and they are used in this way.
Divided, they are two tables that can be placed wherever you prefer.
Placed adjacent to each other, and this is possible thanks to the top borders, which enable the two small sides of the table to fit one to the other, an extending table is obtained.
But you can position the long sides of the tables adjacent to each other or the short side of one with the long side of the other, to obtain as a result configurations, which are not possible with “normal” extending tables.
Or, and this is the purpose of our project, you can use the tables separated in the same room, giving in this way the possibility for people with the same or similar interests to sit down around the same table.
Thanks to Piggyback everything is settled.
By Magis, of course!
Eugenio Perazza