Design: Toni Kotnik
Coworker: Maximilian Schrems
Steel structure: Gebr. Gysi AG, Baar
Timber construction: Oliver Zgraggen, ETH Dienste


The project Counterpoise expresses a dynamic balancing act: a floating piece of furniture reduced in terms of formal language, radiating in the surrounding space, in the unstable balance of forces. Methodically the design orientates itself along draft principles for structures in building construction. These principles are employed so as to find efficient solutions for the problem of the table top’s large overhangs. Aspects of material behaviour as well as methods for regulating force flows are thereby adapted and applied to the scale and the standards of use of furniture design. The adaptation of structural design principles in structural engineering yields an expression of lightness and floating, that can for physical reasons not be achieved by common constructional methods in the construction of furniture. Thereby, neither form nor material, but the structure and its behaviour, will be staged through the design. Hence, a table whose character is determined by the expressive force of the support structure is created through the fusion of physical necessities and design choices.