The IOI Coffee Tables by GamFratesi are a celebration of Italian materiality, featuring solid brass and gray Emperador and white Carrara marble.
Editor's Notes
Design studio GamFratesi, founded by Danish architect Stine Gam and Italian architect Enrico Fratesi, developed the IOI tables, a slender collection of coffee and side tables.Their slim, tapered legs and the thin tabletops create a quiet silhouette. The marble gives the piece a sophisticated edge, while the brass spheres between the pair of legs add a playful detail.
What the brand says
The use of marble anticipates a growing desire for the honesty and authenticity of organic materials. The careful selection of colors and textures keeps its materiality alive in the final design and individual stones are chosen for their veining and striations, giving each table a unique expression of its own.
Drawing on geometric Art Deco references with a contemporary design language, the collection explores the empty space between the physical form as much as the form itself. The IOI Coffee Tables share a common ‘sticks and sphere’ motif, reflected in the shape of the letters that form their name, pronounced ‘i-o-i.’
The table’s twin legs are linked by a small solid brass sphere, that works as both a functional ‘spacer’ to strengthen the dual pipe-like legs, and as an intimately considered signature detail or ‘pause’ that emphasizes both its own materiality and the careful attention paid to the spaces between the elements of each piece.
At three different heights and diameters, the IOI Coffee Tables work well in pairs, groups and even clusters or alone as a single table alongside GUBI’s extensive range of lounge chairs and sofas.
GamFratesi
GamFratesi Design Studio was established in 2006. Stine Gam (born 1975) and Enrico Fratesi (born 1978) belong to the latest generation of furniture architects. Stine is Danish, while Enrico is Italian and together they represent a new interpretation of the meeting between Danish and international design traditions.
GamFratesi's design takes its creative drive from a fusion of tradition and renewal and in an experimental approach to their chosen materials and techniques. With their dual traditional background, they draw on the classic Danish furniture and craft tradition as well as the classic Italian intellectual and conceptual approach. Understanding a tradition and addressing it actively in the workshop makes it possible to expand on it. From this cross-cultural substrate they create furniture that respectfully reflects tradition while also featuring unique embedded stories, symbols and associations, often expressed in a minimalist idiom.
"Our work is balancing between the traditional and surprising. Often it takes just a small detail to achieve or break an expression, and we are very curious about that. We work strictly with the Scandinavian approach to crafts, simplicity and functionalism, but there always happens to be a strong emotion to concept and story behind each work. Contrasts are often the center of our inspiration. Both in work and daily life we are constantly confronted with contrasts, and we do work a lot with references and respect to traditions in both our cultures. We both have roots in strong design cultures. Studying, researching and moving constantly between our two countries, it has become such a natural part of us, that it will also show in our work."
GamFratesi aim to create furniture that illustrates the process and the techniques that created it, and which reflect a persistent exploration of the diverse border zone between harmony and disharmony.
At GUBI, we're on a continual quest. A journey. Fuelled by our passion to discover overlooked icons from the past and future icons in the making, we've made a distinctive name for ourselves in the international design arena as a dynamic design force to be reckoned with.