Keel Dining Table

The marble is a dark grey with lighter veins, over a welded steel frame built to the shape of the keel, so the stone is the skin and the steel is the reason it stands. The keel's sides keep one constant taper from the foot to the long edges of the top, so every face of the underside is a single plane. From the end the table is a V on a narrow foot; from the side it is a wedge; from above it is a plain rectangle of grey stone. Each view gives a different shape, and all of them are the same three lines.

Seating is along the two long sides, and because the keel is narrow and runs down the centre, every chair tucks under the top with nothing in front of the knees. The diagonal underside means the far end of the table is a thin cantilevered edge and the near end is a wall of stone that reads as the head of the table, so the room knows where to sit without being told. The dark grey takes plates and glasses as a quiet ground.

The detail is the foot: 450 mm of flat stone, the one place the table touches the floor. It is short enough that the table appears to balance, and long enough that it does not, because the steel inside carries the top back to it. Three lengths on the sheet, the foot, the upright and the diagonal, are the table.