MILAN — “It’s hard to talk about a table,” said Spanish designer Jaime Hayon. This mundane object, after all, is just a “board with four legs,” and there are literally millions of them in the world. Yet during a so-called “roundtable” discussion at Danish furniture company Fritz Hansen’s Milan showroom last week, timed to coincide with Salone de Mobile, Hayon found quite a bit to say about his new Fritz Hansen Analog Table, a design driven by dialog, philosophy, and mathematics.
“This is a new form; it’s not round, it’s not oval, and it’s not square,” Hayon explained. Round tables, ironically, are hard on conversations because they put sitters at a distance; squares, almost by definition, are uncool. “I looked at what’s good about each one and took a little bit from each.” The result is what he calls a Hayonic form, an elongated near-hexagon with subtle convexities, rounded on its edges to make the angles almost undetectable. He engineered a new geometry that literally brings its sitters closer together, allowing them to be seated comfortably without intruding on each other’s elbowroom.
Designed for home, restaurant, or office, the goal was to enhance conversation. “The point was a six-person table with comfort on every zone, not having a square or circle, and still [being] generous,” Hayon continued. “I went to Fritz Hansen and brought the philosophy, not the form of what I wanted to do.” The new shape extends below the surface to the Hayonic legs, reinforced with aluminum and set at angles borrowed from traditional Japanese architecture that bolsters stability without increasing bulk.
References to Japanese architecture are, somewhat surprisingly, a prominent feature of traditional Danish design. Like that of the Japanese, the Scandinavian aesthetic can be summarily described as incorporating clean, organic lines, unadulterated natural materials, and quiet silhouettes. Meanwhile, Hayon, known for his pronounced sense of humor, designed a green chicken-shaped rocking chair and donned a spacesuit for the 2013 “Funtastico” retrospective of his work at the Groninger museum. Despite such theatrics, Hayon and Fritz Hansen, now in their second year of collaboration, have proven that they go quite well together. In its Milan showroom, the Danish manufacturer even presented Hayon’s new design with its recently relaunched Drop Chair, a 1950s design by the late Danish modernist Arne Jacobsen.
“I always analyze a bit who I’m working with,” Hayon said. “It’s not research. I’m listening to them. I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t listen to anybody. They just go to companies and say, ‘this is what I want to do.’ I’ve never understood how a designer could go to Fritz Hansen and make a square sofa. They can do anything you want. You come with a square? That’s like saying to a three-star Michelin chef, ‘Boil me an egg.’”
The respect, of course, is mutual. Shortly after last year’s launch of Hayon’s first Fritz Hansen design — the wingbacked, extravagantly comfortable Ro Armchair — Christian Rasmussen, the company’s head of design, expressed ease in working with his new business partner. “It’s nice to [hear other languages] interpret the names in their own way,” he told the Architect’s Newspaper. “Some of the best interpretations of Danish design history come from abroad. Jamie isn’t afraid of going close to our heritage.”
