Water Table

Name: Water Table

Materials: Walnut, Manchurian Ash

Time: 2017-2018

Designer: Li Xiaoming

Design company: ARCHSTUDIO (www.archstudio.cn)

Photographer: Jin Weiqi

Author: Li Xiaoming

I have been focusing on the inharmony among nature, life and human beings, and I often think about the relationship between nature and man, and how people and nature can have dialogue with each other. When I am in the nature, I am sometimes touched by the spirit of nature, which attracts people to be close to it, people and nature are combined into one, and people become a part of nature.

By staring at the tracks of flowing water frequently, I feel the time, space, and life. The water table comes from my reinterpretation of the water waves. A 3d visual sense and a moving feeling are achieved through showing the vortex water waves in a 2d plane. The table top is flat, and there is no real change of the vertical vortex.

The elliptical table edge defines the basic outline of moving water. The table is used when people are sitting aside, so that its height considers the changes of people's visual dimension and angle. Between the sensory threshold of distance change, the principle of pseudoblepsia causes the visual changes by flowing water vortex, rapidly or slowly, just like a pond of dynamic water that lets us feel it, interact with it and dialogue with nature. Man is an important element in the design of the water table since people's movement drives the water table's "movement", and the interaction between people and product is in the middle of this.

Two different woods, namely, walnut and Manchurian ash were selected for the table. The deep and light lines constitute the texture of the top. The water waves are flowing clockwise, while the grains of walnut and manchurian ash are moving irregularly and transversely, and it is such wooden lines in different directions that creates the alternant feeling of movement, the closer we are, the stronger it is. And when we are still, the lines are still. We focus on the subtle changes of the natural wood texture, and we also need the sense of texture, it's just like touching the calm water.