Kayo

Extensible table

The way things are produced has not changed much over the years. Objects have been made using similar processes and materials for hundreds of years. But once in a while there is a breakthrough and an object is made in a manner never realized before. When Satyendra Pakhalé was invited to visit the FIAM pioneering manufacturing plant near Pesaro, Italy, he recalls that, “It felt like being in the aerospace industry, where passionate people in thermal protective aprons with great skills and techniques were forming, engineering and making objects out of industrial glass using high-temperature furnaces.” Glass is a magical material with futuristic associations and characteristics such as transparency, hardness and structural strength. These allowed Pakhalé to create a table with only two supporting pivots, without compromising its stability.

Kayo’s main plane on bent glass legs and its extensible parts are connected by a compact mechanism that works effortlessly with a single knob extending the table from two to an impressive three metre span. “It was a real challenge to create a new compact mechanism and the seemingly obvious bent glass legs,” says the designer.

“They required three years of rigourous design and product development work.”

“I recalled Hannah Arendt mentioning a table in her ‘The Human Condition’ (1958);

She writes “The table brings everything and everybody together in a spirit of gratitude. It creates possibilities and inspires whilst reaming itself, as it were, invisible (…).’ “An invisible table that is elegant and magical – literally unseen – is what I wanted to create. It could be achieved with FIAM’s pioneering bent glass technology.” says Pakhalé

Produced by hitaa-world