To date, my favorite incarnation of the “adaptable space” office ethos is Wouter Scheublin’s Walking Table. As you may recall from Design Miami 2009, this ingenious contraption that’s also a solid walnut multi-use table physically walks out of the way at a moment’s notice to free-up valued floor space (see the video). Halcon’s Motus Table doesn’t move its legs, but it does move its enviably spacious tabletop—up and out of the way with the grace of an easy saunter.

Motus Conference Table. Designed by George Miller-Ramos, James Lawrence, and Mark Von Der Heide. Manufactured by Halcon.

The Motus Conference Table is Adaptable and Pragmatic

The judges at this year’s NeoCon were so taken with Motus’ effortless transformation, that they awarded it the Best of NeoCon Gold medal for tables and the Silver medal for Conferencing Furniture.

Designed by the collaborative trio of George Miller-Ramos, James Lawrence, and Mark Von Der Heide, Motus represents a concerted effort to synthesize the old with the new. Or, as Ben Conway, Executive Vice President of Halcon puts it, “MOTUS fulfills the need for executive-level reconfigurable tables by delivering advanced function within the form of a design classic.”

Indeed, the piece is aesthetically impressive, conveying a solidity and heft one rarely sees in a conference table—exactly the image one might wish to project in the boardroom environment. Yet this is no stuffy power play but rather a versatile, functional, and practical piece that propels floor space into new realms of high utility.

Via ContractDesign.

About the Manufacturer: Manufacturer Halcon sets a great example for the rest of us about how to source locally and build sustainably without sacrificing an iota of aesthetic appeal. The Minnesota-based company specializes in casegoods, conferencing, and seating. Halcon creates all products in house “with hand-selected wood veneers and solids… our method of sequence matching veneers in each office suite results in a beauty and consistency that is simply not achievable by mass-production.”