Cor 120 Coffee Table

Ruy Ohtake and Etel Carmona, longtime friends, had always envisioned a collaboration focused on reissuing the architect's iconic design pieces. In 2024, this long-awaited partnership came to life through ETEL during ABERTO3.

Ruy Ohtake’s early design creations were integrated into architectural contexts, where the demands of each project guided the conception of the pieces. In those instances, concrete was often employed. While its aesthetic aligned with brutalist architecture, its inherent inflexibility resulted in a rigid fixation within space.

The Cor 120 Central Table was one of Ruy Ohtake’s first works to transcend the requirements of a specific architectural setting. At this stage, Ruy began designing pieces by exploring the intrinsic properties of materials, rather than responding solely to programmatic and site-specific demands. In 1996, these pieces were presented in a series at Galeria Nara Roesler. It was during this period that Ruy began to explore the malleability of metal. Despite its weight, metal offers a spatial flexibility and formal lightness that other materials do not. The table was thus conceived as a unique piece in 6 mm carbon steel, representing an exploratory exercise that had never before been commercialized.

The Cor 120 Central Table was designed around the flexibility of metal, taking on an almost C-shaped form that supports a thin glass top, bringing a sense of lightness to the space.