Italian designer Andrea Ponti’s Kanban steel and concrete side table references Hong Kong’s industrial architecture in its materials and Kowloon’s distinctive neon signage in its form.
The table comprises a concrete drum-shaped base with a steel cuff at the top, out from which protrudes a side arm, which supports the steel table top above.
Having moved to Hong Kong in 2013, the designer wanted to create a product that paid homage to his new home. “I wanted to thank this extraordinary city with a product that described its intensity and poetry,” Andrea told coadg. “Products need to have a soul, a story.”
He translated the urban landscape of multi-story former factories – now largely warehouses and factories – into his material choices of concrete and steel; and took inspiration for the table’s shape from the large neon signs that light up the streets of Hong Kong’s Kowloon district. “The signs jut out precariously into the streets, hanging from a single slender steel bar,” explains the designer. “Hong Kong is a real crossroads between Eastern and Western cultures, and this provides me with great inspiration that I always try to translate into my projects.”
The concrete base is cast by hand using a machined ABS mould and then hand-finished. “I like to play between industrial design and craftsmanship,” says Andrea. The steel elements are industrially manufactured and hand-finished with a matte charcoal treatment giving them their dark colour. The designer describes the resulting contrast as “an exquisite chiaroscuro,” an artistic term for paintings that emphasise light and shade.
The designer, who studied in Italy and lived in Japan for seven years before moving to Hong Kong, acknowledges the influence of all three cultures in his work. “Hong Kong gave me a new approach to design and deeply changed my character,” he says. “But the Italian influence is still extremely important in my work. That and the Japanese influences are less visible in this product, but they’re still there.”
