In the past, I have waxed poetic about construction sites. Having grown up in a family of engineers and contractors, I often spent Saturdays and school afternoons walking around half-built structures, inspecting the rebar that stuck up from cement foundations and playing with the blueprints that lined the on-site drafting tables. My love of construction lighting is obvious in my tribute to Spaghetti Chandelier; and my attraction to scaffolding is apparent in my review of Brave New World. Now, I will have to focus my attention on the Maze Cocktail Table, designed by Debbie Palao, which is “inspired by scaffolding.”

Maze. Designed by Debbie Palao.

Constructivist Coffee Table Inspired by Scaffolding

There’s just something fantastic about scaffolding. I love to walk beneath it in the plywood tunnels that New York construction companies haphazardly construct for sidewalk travelers in Manhattan. I love to stare at skyscraper window washers on their plywood elevators, a pendant version of scaffolding. So naturally, I am inclined to love Maze, the cocktail table available through Snug Furniture. Made with rattan poles in black or natural that are “artistically fastened with copper wires,” Maze Cocktail Table includes a glass top, which both recalls the curtain walls of urban hi-rises and gives users clear access to the scaffolding base.

A cross between a pile of spilled matches and a game of Pick Up Stix, Maze capitalizes on the jumbled appeal of crosshatched lines, thereby highlighting “the importance of these seemingly mundane structures.” The name Maze doesn’t hide what designer Palao clearly knows—that a mad collection of crisscrossing lines is disorienting, creating multiple patterns within the liminal, angular spaces. Try to follow one pole with your line of vision and you’ll soon be tricked by a shift in perspective. Scaffolding is like a vertical maze for the gaze.