In this post, I wanted discuss my thoughts on table tops. As a father of five, the normal routine after school or work or shopping, is to enter the house and dump everything onto the counter or floor. This often leads to frantic morning searches for keys or homework, or late night panics to find that prescription that was filled after work.
Dumping our things on a large surface certainly feels normal and instinctual even thought we know it leads to bad outcomes. I started asking what if we just eliminated large, open surfaces. And replaced them with segmented surfaces.
Above I show the difference between a monolithic and a segmented top. The segmented top diminishes my natural instinct to dump everything into a pile. Instead, it promotes arranging my stuff because its surface is segmented. This practice is also called knolling or the act of arranging items beautifully.
This does not seek to organize a room or house. It simply encourages a habit towards orderliness not chaos. To this end, I design and make knolling trays that break up large open surfaces.
Tim B Studio 