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Truck Architecture's 2-Way table lets you have it both ways.
By Paul Makovsky
March 2002
Truck Architecture's designers include Rob Rogers (left; born 1959), Jennifer
Carpenter (center; born 1970), and Jonathan Marvel (right; born 1960).
In 1991 Rob and Jonathan formed Rogers Marvel Architects (RMA), focusing
on museums, galleries, and lighting. Jennifer joined RMA after graduating
from Columbia University in 1999, and the firm launched the Truck product
division the following year. RMA received the 2001 Emerging Voices honor
from the Architectural League of New York.
It's not every day that a client gives an architect money to start a
business. But that's just what happened to Rob Rogers and Jonathan
Marvel, partners in Rogers Marvel Architects (RMA), in 1999. Their
enlightened client, a silent partner at Kate Spade, believed there was a
market niche for "product-based architecture" and gave RMA a
gift with the following edict: "Use the money to explore, study,
and produce."
Busy with architectural commissions, RMA left the seed money untouched
until architect Jennifer Carpenter joined the firm later that year to
help design Kate Spade shops worldwide. She had experience in design and
business, having started her own small handbag company the previous
year. So RMA found itself with the right team to launch the product
division, Truck Architecture. The first prototypes were made in December
2000, when I talked to Carpenter about the 2-Way table, which debuted at
the Maison & Objet exhibition in Paris early this year.
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We realized the table could work both in the asymmetrical interlocking leg
configuration we originally had intended and also if you flipped
that upside down. Most people had strong opinions about which one they liked.
We thought it would be great if we could offer a table with the flexibility
to turn that base either up or down, so the consumer could make that decision
when they put it together. |
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The slight depression in the table is a feature we wanted, but it was also
difficult to make. We ended up applying the surface material in the
same way that you apply veneer in a vacuum bag, which allows that depression
to receive the material without a problem. The vacuum-bag process does that
beautifully. |
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Photo by Dave Arnold
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The 2-Way table is available in two versions: the Big Lounge (shown here)
and the Small Lounge. The base is made of a thin Baltic plywood and the
tabletop is available in plywood covered with either a leather laminate
or a powder-coated lacquer finish. |
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We started working on this in August 2001 and made the first prototype
in September. One of the problems with the prototype that we corrected in
production was how to laminate the surface of the tabletop. We really wanted
to offer a couple of different surfaces--one leather and the other more
technological looking, made of dyed scrap leather and latex. It has this
mysterious quality. We initially had to laminate that by hand with a contact
adhesive, which is very time-consuming and expensive. We found a solution
when working on the problem of laminating the tabletop depression. |
Another problem was allowing the table to operate in two different ways
(for the base to flip). The original prototype had a series of eight
routed slots so that the table legs could fit snugly in the slots on
the underside of the table [four slots for each position]. We figured
out that we could cut the slots down to four by just doing a larger slot
than you need. Those eight connections weren't really providing that much
stability, and it was fine to have bigger slot openings and not have
it completely snug. It also makes the table easier to put together. There's
no need for hardware.
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