Aluminum Honeycomb Table is Strong & Light
When working with metal, designers usually have a difficult choice to make: the product can be lightweight or it can be strong. The Blade table from Alexander Purcell Rodrigues uses Mykon‘s aluminum honeycomb technology is an innovative product that manages to incorporate a lot of strength into a very thin table.
The honeycomb technology allows for an exceptionally high strength to weight ratio. As a result, the tabletop can be larger than you would expect without the need for central bracing.
Without the need for bracing, the Blade table’s design is very simple and streamlined. The tabletop is 82 inches long and just .43 inches thick, but it is remarkably strong.
The table is simply four legs and a tabletop that looks like it is floating slightly above the legs. Currently, the table is available in a polished aluminum finish only, but it will eventually be produced with stylish wood or lacquered tops.
“A revolutionary dining table named Blade is the first product from the groundbreaking collaboration between multi-award winning designer Alexander Purcell Rodrigues and Mykon – developers of unique aluminum honeycomb products. The elegant clean lines of the Blade table take advantage of the high-strength to weight ratio of aluminum honeycomb and new techniques in fabrication to create an impossibly thin and elegant table that has been reduced to its purest form.”
“The Blade table’s razor thin, high load bearing honeycomb core allows an 11mm thick top to span 2100mm with no cross bracing. The subtle edge details and delicate reveals combined with an intricately engineered leg assembly create a visual and material tension that forms a compelling impression of a surface that is simply floating in space.”
“The concept itself arose from an understanding of Mykon’s versatile honeycomb technology,” says Alexander Purcell Rodrigues. “By utilizing their fabrication methodologies I realized that we could create a table like no other. One where an ultra-thin tabletop was not only self-supporting it could become the sole structural element of the tables construction.”
“Collaborating with Mykon allowed me to combine their versatile honeycomb technology with their advanced engineering skillet and apply it to a polished piece of furniture with the aim of re-envisioning the ubiquitous dining table as a unique and timeless object. Blade is comprised of a series of slender elegant graceful forms that seemingly do not intersect. A sense of impossibility is created, by reducing a table to its purest form one of the most striking things about blade is how little of it there is.”
