Surface Tension

Not a finished table, but a surface in motion: an adjustable woven system shaped by bodies, objects, gravity, and elastic force.

Role: Team designer and maker
Materials: Wood, elastic cord, memory foam
Context: Speculative Design
Year: 2026

Surface Tension table and memory-foam stool shown together

The project

Exploring use through tension and change.

Surface Tension is an interactive table I designed and assembled to explore how a familiar domestic object can invite different forms of use. A wooden frame supports a surface of blue and orange elastic cords that can be rearranged and adjusted by the people using it.

The surface responds to touch and to the weight of objects placed on it. This shifting tension allows the table to support activities such as dining, play, and collective making, while encouraging people to reconsider what a table can be.

Angled view of the woven Surface Tension table — The cables can be pulled to the side to create different shapes of patterns

A surface in motion

Force is visible in every placement.

Ceramic cup deforming the elastic table surface — The elastic weave bends locally while distributing force across the frame.

Full table and memory-foam stool viewed from the front — Table and stool use the same language of cord, compression, and exposed force.

Failure as a space
for play.

The project began by asking what happens when conventional objects are designed with the intention of failing: a chair without a stable seat, or a table that cannot hold objects in the expected way.

Instead of treating ambiguity as a defect, Surface Tension uses it to invite experimentation, misuse, negotiation, and collective interpretation.

The Queer Art of Failure

Jack and Judith Halberstam framed failure as an escape from fixed expectations and a source of unexpected ways of being.

The Textility of Making

Tim Ingold describes making as following forces and material flows rather than imposing a predetermined form.

The companion stool

The material shows how it became a seat.

Memory foam is left exposed rather than hidden beneath upholstery. Elastic cord gathers the resisting material into a temporary seat and keeps the forces that shape it visible.

The stool does not begin with a fixed ergonomic shell. Its form arises through negotiation between foam, cord tension, gravity, and the body of the person sitting on it.

Surface Tension stool with folded memory foam held by elastic cord — The foam is folded and held, not cut into a finalized shape.

Collective making

A structure completed through interaction.

Through prototyping and observing how people used the table, I learned to treat each interaction as part of the design process. Changes in cord tension and arrangement revealed possibilities I could not have planned in advance, showing me how an open design can develop through making and use

Complete Surface Tension installation on a white background — The final installation keeps construction, adjustment, and material behavior open to view.