If someone hasn't said it by now let me be the first to coin a pithy new A&D aphorism: "leave it to the Dutch." As we've seen before in all manner of interesting, innovative, and oft off-kilter efforts like Droog's Knotty Topic, Wouter Scheublin's Walking Table, and Pieter de Leeuw's Letters Bookshelf, designers in Amsterdam's orbit seem to have a flair for the creative concept, the savvy solution. Lest I forget to add that same is often possessed of an unusual and unusually captivating aesthetic, witness the SitTable by UNStudio for Prooff, a piece evincing the rare achievement of bonafide novelty. Where most contract work puts the chair beneath or astride or adjacent to the table, UNStudio's Sit puts it within and among same. In fact, observers are hard pressed to define where table ends and chair begins.

SitTable. Designed by UNStudio for Prooff.

From UNStudio's perspective, interest in the SitTable began with the company's inception, as part and parcel of a consuming interest in hybrid forms. This desire for functional synthesis would seem to span all that they do, "from large scale mixed-use urban projects through to programmatic and volumetric transitions in public buildings and private residences… to products designed by the studio." The idea is to be bold enough to transcend the familiar and sometimes stultifying boundaries like "residential" and "commercial," or "table" and "chair."

Sit presents a very literal fusion of the latter two. The chair is no longer a chair and the table well beyond a mere table, as they become inextricably bound as "two pieces of multi-functional furniture, offering a variety of space-creating authority to the user." And with Sit, there's more than enough authority to go around. UNStudio envisions the piece as the latest contribution to the exponential growth of the collaborative workspace. The piece facilitates multiple uses with equal facility: quiet reading place, impromptu social space, broad platform for rapid display of workplace materials, even show space for exhibitions or shops.

The SitTable's high functionality has a worthy counterpart in its aesthetic versatility: options include dark oak wood veneer, white HPL veneer, one or two seats, and fabric in mustard yellow or purple. Frames are latticed steel in anthracite gray.

Via Dezeen.