It's a Metaphor Table by Emanuele Di Bacco

Bronze Furniture · 2020

It's a Metaphor Table

by Emanuele Di Bacco

Bronze A' Design Award 2020 in Furniture
CLIENT: Gladstone London
Estimated Number of Design Views: 15,294
Verification code 99E18457DE · Verify this award

Visit Site View at A' Design Award Press Release

Colors

About It's a Metaphor Table

This project is poking fun at itself while raising social awareness about gender equality. Specifically, it uses a metaphor that springs from sumo, one of the most male-dominated sports in Japanese society. Women are not allowed to compete professionally in this sport given sexist rules, which border them outside the wrestling ring as a result of their "impurity" by reason of the menstrual blood. Knocking a sumo warrior to the ground, at the service of a flower pot or any other need people may have, desecrates that macho-dominance sumo still holds, by simply using irony and humor.

About the Bronze A' Design Award

It's a Metaphor Table is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. It's a Metaphor Table is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. It's a Metaphor Table splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.

Press Kit

Unique Properties: This is a furniture product able to speak and provoke, challenging with irony and a clumsy smile unethical behaviors of our times.
Dimensions & Packaging: Measures are in mm.

Glass platform ø: 1800 / Glass platform thickness: 10 / Body with: 850 / Body height: 750 / Body depth: 1000
Tags: table, social design, equality of the sexes, Japan, sumo
Production Technology: 3D-printed assembled object. It can be produced either way with Eco-friendly 3D-printed Poly Lactic Acid filaments or carbon fibers. The structure is divided in multiparts, hand refined and assembled. Successively the whole body is glazed by immersion and finished with a vitreous enamel coating.
A round tempered glass is based on the structure and secured using discreet clear glass high-grip bumpers, specifically designed for the purpose.

The structural analysis take into consideration the chosen materials and the multipart splitting process, where every cut and internal printed reinforcements are made to dump and sustain the weight the structure will go through.
Design Challenge: The creative challenge of this project is to combine the practical function of a furniture piece and communication contents as a means of social commitment. Sumo wrestlers are so well regarded and revered in society to be almost considered as macho semi-gods in their country; placing one of them in a conscious submissive position -grateful and happy to help others- wishes to rebalance a more male-dominated thinking to a non-discriminatory one.
Research: The main focus of this project -together with many pieces produced by our design studio- is to raise awareness about social rights and equal opportunity. Specifically, the target of our research was speaking about the equality of the sexes without being moralistic or patronising; in order to do this we chose to use irony and humour, two powerful rhetorical devices to convey a disputed concept without too much bloodshed.
Inspiration: "The piece of wood came alive and it was able to speak". That's pretty much what happened to Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio; likewise, adding communication contents to a product, gives this object an identity and the ability to speak to people.
This project is poking fun at itself while aim to raise social awareness on equality of the sexes. Specifically, it uses a metaphor which springs from sumo, one of the most male dominated sport in the Japanese society. Women are not allowed to compete professionally in this sport given sexist rules, which by tradition border them outside the wrestling ring as a result of their "impurity" by reason of the menstrual blood.
Knocking a sumo warrior to the ground at the service of a flower pot -or any other need people may require from a table- ironically desecrates this macho dominance still present in some traditions.
Project Duration: The project has started in December 2019 in London and finished, as it is shown, in February 2020. Currently, the table has a unique prototype and will be ready to be produced and launched serially in May 2020.
Operation Flow: A table which can hosts up to 10 seaters. Ideal to be placed wherever an open minded spirit is at home.
Patents: Copyrights belong to Emanuele Di Bacco
Image Credits: Emanuele Di Bacco all Rights Reserved