Philink Table

Working as a group is fun whether it is at home or at the office. If you are an eco-lover looking for appropriate furniture for your work place, then you got to take look at this. Philink table happens to be an innovation of Belgian architects Jeroen Theuns and Caroline Voet. This creative piece of furniture was introduced at the Interieur 08 by Koninklijke Ahrend who seems to be an ardent believer of the fact that the environment at the work place motivates the staff to work as a group.

The Ahrend p h i l i n k has been designed to allow different units to be combined in a wide variety of ways. The form of the tabletop is crucial here, with three sides the same length and an angle of 90 degrees between two of them. By using the golden section1 (often denoted by the Greek letter Φ – pronounced ‘phi’) to define the ratio of the length of the fourth side to that of the first three, the designers ensured that the angle opposite the right angle has a value of 60 degrees. It is this geometrical property of the tabletop that makes it possible to ‘link’ a number of units to create square, triangular and other exciting configurations. These stimulating combinations can be used to good effect in all kinds of environments – conference rooms, executive offices, open-plan offices, canteens, bars, cafeterias or lounges. The construction is robust, light and attractively priced. The table is available with the worktop painted green or beige or varnished in natural bamboo finish; the legs are black or white.

The Ahrend p h i l i n k attracted some distinguished visitors during the Fuori Salone del Mobile: the Belgium Consul-General in Milan, François Cornet d’Elzius, and the Belgian Ambassador to Italy, Jan De Bock, came to admire the table and to chat to its designers, the architects Caroline Voet and Jeroen Theuns.

1 The golden section Φ (pronounced ‘phi’), which has the value 1 : 1.618, is the reflection of an underlying symmetry that is found in many aspects of the physical world and of life itself, such as cell division. The mathematical characteristics of this ratio were known to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, but it was also used as a basic design principle by countless artists and architects such as Leonardo Da Vinci, the members of the Dutch de Stijl group and Le Corbusier.