Wood Awards 2013: Judges’ Special Award

The judges decided to give a special award to this giant table in the shape of a projection of the world, calling it: ‘An extraordinary academic translation of an idea into a functional product. It is pleasantly bonkers, deliciously mad, and completely refreshing.’ 

Initially designed for a pop-up restaurant project for the London 2012 Olympics, the table, and its integral benches, seat 80.

Worldscape uses the Equidistant Cylindrical map of the world – NASA’s digital map of choice, where all degrees are equal lengths in both directions – to create an inhabitable dining environment made from standard sheets of industrially-produced material, mapping Latvian birch plywood to the planet. The 360-degree length of the map was divided into 12, each strip measuring 30 terrestrial degrees in width, mapping perfectly onto ­4ft wide sheets of plywood, melamine-faced for hygiene. The sheets were digitally carved with contours – outlines of the world’s geography at 500m-high intervals, cut straight from the computer. The table is thus divided into a grid of 35 generally-square modules of irregularly-shaped landmasses, each deeply individual yet linking together to form a collective occupiable landscape. 

The table uses all the world contours, from both above and below sea level, stretching their vertical relationship, like an engineer’s section of a bridge, to best fit the body. Diners sit in the sea – astride a collective louvred bench running the length of the ocean trench, 2km beneath the ocean surface – and eat off the sea-level coastline.
 
The main surfaces at sea level are striated by longitudinal lines and perforated with the patterns of global cities. Each table cradles multiple light sources which illuminate these urban constellations; the view from above thus replicating the satellite view of the Earth at night, diners illuminated by our collective inhabitation of the Earth.