BALANCE COFFEE TABLE

Balance is two tables: a generous rectangular coffee table and a smaller light one made to move. The pair is the design — the large table holds the centre of the room, and the small one goes wherever someone is sitting.

Why a second table

A single large coffee table serves whoever is directly in front of it and nobody else. The portable table solves that: it draws up beside a chair, sits at the end of a sofa, takes a laptop or a cup at hand height, and goes back beside the main table when the room is tidied. It is light enough to carry with one hand, which is the whole requirement.

Drawn as one piece

The two share the same lines and proportions, so pushed together they read as a single layered composition rather than a big table with a small table next to it. Apart, the small one still looks deliberate on its own — which is the test a matching set usually fails.

Architectural lines

Clean edges, no applied detail, balanced proportions. On a form like this the whole piece depends on the edges staying true and the surfaces staying flat, because there is no ornament to look at instead. That is handled in the making rather than in the drawing.

Materials and sizes

Made to order. Material, finish and the dimensions of both pieces are specified per project — and on this model the proportion between the two is set together, so the small table stays right for the large one at any size. Tell us the length of the sofa and the arm height of the chairs.

Where it belongs

A contemporary living room, an apartment, a hotel suite, an office lounge. It suits a room where people sit in more than one place, which is most rooms.