Project Overview

The Cork Stopper Table addresses a unique concept contrary to the stereotype of DIY furniture: mass-produced, cheap, labor intensive and humble. A well-engineered leg and cork assembly mechanism combined with a thoughtful set of materials is enough to show off the aesthetic of straight-forward structure. This might be one of the most sophisticated coffee tables achievable in less than one minute of assembly.

Organisation

Individual

Team

Design: Hyeonil Jeong

Prototype: Daniel Michalik Furniture Design, Hans Factory, Bear Glass

Photography: Hyeonil Jeong

Project Brief

This is a DIY coffee table with an innovative joinery idea and high-end look. This Cork Stopper Table is composed with four plywood clip legs, a glass top and a giant cork stopper. This design highlights the beauty of its unique and efficient joinery structure in the middle of table top, and the material combination of Baltic birch plywood, hand-crafted cork, and high-polished tempered glass achieves a contemporary but poetic look. The assembly requires less than a minute of time and no glue, screws nor hardware is needed.

Project Innovation/Need

The main goal was designing a sophisticated high-end look furniture with simple and easy assembly mechanism. Although there is a lot of so-called 'Do It Yourself' furniture, much of it is not really suitable to be 'done by yourself.' When moving homes, or replacing or renovating, many people buy new pieces of DIY furniture and in a lot of cases, those DIY products need more assembly time and labor than they expect. It’s true that there are easy-to-build DIY parsons table kits, however I do not think it is satisfying to have a cheap and dull looking parsons table in the middle of the living room. When it comes to DIY furniture, I feel that we have only two options out there: 1. Easy assembly but ugly appearance, 2. Beautiful look but difficult assembly. I want to add a third option: DIY furniture with easy assembly and a beautiful high-end look.

Design Challenge

To achieve a 'high-end look and easy assembly' furniture design, I have been focused on finding out an unique and efficient joinery structure and I came up with a clip leg and cork stopper idea. Based on this structural feature, I spent long time finding the best material combination that includes sheet metal, plastic, rubber, styrene foam, and finalizing the design with the combination of Baltic birch plywood, hand-crafted cork and high-polished tempered glass. The Baltic birch plywood leg was a very time and cost efficient choice. It is an easier material to fabricate compared to solid wood and has lighter shipping weight than a piece of metal. The clear tempered glass table top shows the beauty of joinery structure without hiding anything. Cork is the best material to add a natural and warm feeling against the chilly and clear look of the glass top. The giant cork stopper pulls a friendly and poetic vibe out of the minimal composition of the table. This piece of furniture has an easy-to-assemble structure with a well-crafted high-end look.

Sustainability

The cork stopper table has no hardware part at all. In other words, it does not require any of metal fabrication process which causes lots of environmental pollution, labor exploitation and unfair trades from the third world. This design also have an advantage of energy, labor and cost reduction of after sales service caused by incorrect assembly by user as it have a super simple and straight forward assembly mechanism. The easy to assemble and disassemble structure also allows the advantage of less package volume for storage and shipping.