Cologne 2014: a grid of thin wooden strips supports the surface of this table by German designer Ruben Beckers to make it extremely lightweight (+ slideshow).
Ruben Beckers named his 4.5-kilogram poplar wood table kleinergleich5, which means "less than five".
"It is safe to assume that at just 4.5 kilograms, it is probably the lightest wooden table in the world," he said.
Beckers employed a grid of extremely thin strips to create a rigid structure beneath the slender table top, so it could support objects placed on top.
The lengths of wood slot together at five-centimetre intervals to create the lattice, which is 28 millimetres deep.
Removable solid-wood legs are bent into the holes in the grid to connect them with the table top.
The table is half the weight of Benjamin Hubert's lightweight table, unveiled during the London Design Festival last September.
The table was designed during the Wood*Transformation project at Kassel School of Art and Design, and is currently on display as part of the [D3] Design Talents exhibition at imm cologne.
This year's [D3] Contest was won by a storage rail based on a traditional Shaker-style peg board. Imm cologne continues until Sunday at the Koelnmesse exhibition centre.
