Japanese architect Kengo Kuma has designed a limited-edition table that he describes as a “wood cloud.”

That may seem hard to imagine, but Kuma is one of the few designers able to manifest such an eccentric vision accurately. 

The starchitect has made an illustrious career of celebrating the contemporary beauty and simplicity of wooden objects made by using traditional Japanese methods: he designed the stacked-timber Odunpazari Modern Museum in Turkey; a blackened wood chicken coop at Oaxaca’s Casa Wabi artist residency (yes, you read that right!); and is working on the soon-to-be wood-lined Straousbourg performing arts complex. 

That same graceful touch is fundamental to his “Kigumi” table, a limited-edition piece made in collaboration with Eins zu Eins, a German furniture-maker that specializes in high-end furniture designs by architects. 

The table is a feat of engineering. Composed of a network of fine 20mm by 20mm wooden slats that are interlocked and glued in place, the delicate lattice-like base supports a simple glass plane. The glass, while appearing light, is in reality quite weighty, and in that tension, the table becomes an object of unlikely optic pleasure. 

“For me, a table is an intensely interpersonal thing,” said Kuma. “It signifies rest, communion, nourishment, thought, and conversation, together with others and sometimes by myself.”

The “Kigumi” table is strictly limited to an edition of 10, and is handmade by fabricators at Ludwig Seufert, who have been perfecting the art of craft since 1898. 

See images of the “Kigumi” table below. 

The Kigumi Table by Kengo Kuma. Courtesy of Eins zu Eins.

Detail of the Kigumi Table by Kengo Kuma. Courtesy of Eins zu Eins.

Detail of the Kigumi Table by Kengo Kuma. Courtesy of Eins zu Eins.

Detail of the Kigumi Table by Kengo Kuma. Courtesy of Eins zu Eins.