112408CarteBlanche01.jpgNormally the thought of returning to work in a large office brings on an uncontrollable sense of dread, complete with eye twitches and slurred mutters (anyone who has worked for several years in a certain part of Van Nuys in a corporate park would feel the same; Sandra Tsing Loh has got nuthin' on us). But Edouard François' Carte Blanche Love Table almost has us wishing we did work in a shared creative space...only if it looked like this of course.

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112408CarteBlanche02.jpgProviding a large, up to 35-metre length table made from multiply with cell-shaped recesses produces a large single shared desk, thereby conceiving of the space as a place which holds the middle ground between an individual desk which is often found to be too isolated and an open space layout which in turn is often experienced as being too noisy and too impersonal. Here it is the furniture piece in itself which organises the space of its own accord as it were.

112408CarteBlanche03.jpgThe urge to create a decompartmentalised, be it nowhere disorganised or particularised space, brought Edouard François to incorporate real cacti into the hole table which he himself refers to as vegetable barbed wire : “The cactus, as a concept of vegetable barbed wire, with a view to creating identity, a sense of private property. It pricks and is conducive to engendering a sense of distance.”

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112408CarteBlanche05.jpgPurchasing/order information available here.

[Photos: Paul Raftery]