This Table Designs Itself With A Corrosive Chemical Dance Party


There are all kinds of ways to design a table, but most of them don’t include resonant frequencies or specially-designed abrasive enzymes, much less both. Bonus Table 571 isn’t most tables though, and that’s exactly how it gets its very specific pattern.

Engineered by Colleen & Eric and shown off at NYC Design Week 2013, Bonus Table 571 is all about the process. In order to get a geometrically etching on the table’s surface that’s specific to the very piece of wood its made out of, you’ve got to use the wood’s resonant frequency. Then, when the board starts vibrating, you can suss out its hidden patterns and coat them with an enzyme concoction engineered from forest floor microbes that will gnaw away at the surface. Why? Because it’s awesome.

Bonus Table 571 isn’t so much a table as it is a recipe. Any slab of wood can get the same treatment once you tease out its resonant frequency. And the kind of wood you’re working with will determine how deep down the enzymes can burrow.

It’s certainly not the most straight-forward way to design the surface of a table, but it seems like one of the only ways you could ever actually let the table have a say in what it looks like. It gets no say in the corrosive enzymes, though. [Core77]