As soon as I read that up and coming designer Jochem Faudet cultivates his own food, hoping that “growing your own fruit and vegetables can again become a part of life in the city,” I thought to myself, “I think I like this guy…” With a Bachelors in Engineering in Industrial Product Design from the Hague, experience in industrial lighting concepts with the Amsterdam-based firm Customr, and a “Design Product” Masters Degree from the Royal College of Arts in London, Faudet’s education evinces his desire to “combine the practical industrial background with a more creative and free approach.”

Off the Ground Table. Designed by Jochem Faudet.

Though I hate to take sides, I’d say the pragamatist wins out over the artist in regards to his “Off The Ground Table,” a modular affair of sorts that pairs custom tabletops of wood laminates with bent sheet metal legs. The “high” in an innovation that might be characterized as “high concept” is Faudet’s angular and rigid legs which, very much in the manner of a highly-tensile, super strong triangular paper clip, can grip and release surfaces of a variety of thicknesses and side profiles (20-25 mm thick and 90 to 120 degrees). This feature makes for exceptional portability, providing moving/traveling/re-locating users with the option of packing up legs alone, rather than the entire cumbersome table. And the triangular legs fit one within the next for even easier packing, prompting yours truly (currently on an extended road trip) to slap his forehead in the classic gesture of an insight gleaned too late and exclaim, “we could have used nine or ten of these!”

I say nine or ten because the former sum was the number needed to show Off the Ground in the best light, so says Faudet, whose trio of polyhedric prototypes were lifted quite off the ground by the aforementioned appendages at the recent Airmail Exhibition at Idea Generation. The exhibit, which asked designers to construct a piece around the notion of “weight” in design was certainly fortunate to get work by Faudet. The piece is not only physically light, but also—given its flexibility, portability, and intelligent materials use—philosophically so. It’s a great model for smart design: highly functional, eminently changeable, and good-looking to boot!

via MocoLoco