Arabesco

It is a jewel of construction with a very unusual shape. There is nothing left of the little tables that we used to see in the Arabesco, the traditional legs and surfaces have disappeared. Now the structure becomes substance: a plywood layer bends freely in the space, it twists and turns in a way that makes it stiff. Its legs are well defined by brass tip ends or tapered plywood shapes, which secure it to the ground.

The holes visually lighten the wood structure and challenge the structure itself at the same time, while their fluid line prevents the wood from cracking (which could easily start from more or less acute corners: it is the same logic that Munari applied to his knitted Falkland lamp, which is stretched by various rings). The glass surfaces, whose shapes remind us of other worlds, help to structurally consolidate the system, acting as tie-rod, preventing the table from collapsing under any load. Carlo Mollino becomes an honorary engineer.