Have you ever wanted to be a crab? When I first laid eyes on Formtank’s 3Fold-designer George Rice’s latest attempt to jazz up the familiar drear of the workplace, an aesthetic typified by what Rice characterizes as “acres of veneered beach”-I thought, yes, I’d like to be a crab, even if for just a day: I could negotiate Rice’s “veneered beach” with a certain crustacean aplomb.

3Fold. Designed by George Rice. Manufactured by Formtank.

Rice’s 3Fold table is provocative in many ways, not the least of which is its resemblance to the genuflecting, sideways-ambulating creature alluded to above. At first glance, it seems to be a mechanized beast-all the criss-crossings and ostensible joints appearing to facilitate lowerings and risings, as if to make the thing stow-able and portable. But no. Rice’s 3Fold is no gimmicky hide-away, but rather an engineering coup and a structural tour de force.

The genius of the design lies in its hearkening back to the tradition of L’Esprit Nouveau-the modernist movement in architecture peppered with big names like Van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, and I.M. Pei. To over-generalize terribly, the movement embraced design as a functional art, thus stressing minimal embellishment, the utilization of new technologies and materials, and the celebration of a certain transparency that acknowledged the inherent beauty of the structure. Thus, Van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, Johnson’s glass house, Pei’s Louvre Pyramid-each follow Van der Rohe’s dictum that “less is more, ” in the process showcasing the glass and steel that form the skeleton and defining a new and provocative aesthetic as well.

Just so with Rice’s 3Fold. An evolution of the larger boardroom piece, 2Fold, Rice’s latest “is created from the same principle as 2fold but allows the table a smaller footprint while accommodating leg space for the user.” Like its larger older brother, 3fold is created from a single sheet of finished steel. The base of the table thus retains formidable structural integrity while creating a nifty illusion-that there is more “stuff” to the table than there is. As with 2Fold, whose base volume is just ¼ the volume of the glass top it supports, 3Fold makes efficient use of materials; because the steel is bent into shape-rather than cut and welded-there’s significantly less waste. Further, the reliance on triangular shapes makes 3Fold strong without requiring material bulk (on closer inspection, the sheet steel is surprisingly thin). So there you have it: innovative and compelling form revealing streamlined function. Van der Rohe et. al. would be proud.