The Testudo Dining Set/ Space...

 The set's Left chair...

Initially designed almost two decades ago during my Senior year at Parsons, the Testudo Dining set/ Space (AKA the Turtle Dining Set) has finally been realized. The design, which in this rendition consists of eight  high-backed chairs around a table, was perhaps partly inspired and named after the Roman battle formation Testudo (Turtle in Latin) where individual units (in this case chairs) are positioned in a 'wrapping' formation around a core (a table), thus defining a space. The dining set is intended for large open interiors, where it can provide its own kind of intimacy/ framed space by its set-up alone... 

Four different chair types - each repeated twice -  are needed to complete the design. These are the Left & Right Chairs, the Middle Chair and the End Chair, which are placed around the rectangular table. All the pieces were made of solid beech (bok in Swedish, pyökki in Finnish). The completed design has a wax finish... 

The design has gone through a number of iterations since its conception, involving a major overhaul during our time in London as Small Architecture (nowadays Independent Architects) when its current frame based formation was developed (it used to be much more solid before). This, in turn, needed to be further tweaked (mainly it proportions and dimensions) to enable it to be fabricated locally... 

The fabrications required its fair share of supervision, toing & froing with the carpenters regarding the details, and we (well, Maysaa) did the final (Finland sourced) waxing of the set, but we're very happy with the end result... 

 The Turtle Dining Set & Space...

The End Chair... 

The Right Chair... 

The Middle Chair... 

 The, roughly 100 kilogram, solid beech table...

Above & below - close-ups of some of the details... 

The beech table and seat planes...

 Following up and inspecting a prototype  at the factory...

 Junior furniture tester determining the seat's comfort coefficient...

A bamboo pulp bowl and set of plates from Holland, an Iittala glass dispenser, and a kuksa, are framed by the Testudo chairs... 

A short, still a bit raw, animation made during the development of the design...