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A Surprising Design for Furniture Bracing that References Ancient Roman Formworks

The Centina Collection, by industrial designer Giacomo Moor

By Rain Noe - February 2, 2023

in Furniture Design

With the bracing in this Centina Collection of furniture, I thought Italian industrial designer Giacomo Moor was simply trying to find a use for cut-offs.

However, the Milan-based designer is referencing the historical structures to be found in Italy:

"The scale translation of the forms and languages typical of architecture is a point of departure and a notional source of energy for the new collection of furniture inspired by a range of bridge designs. [It] aims to explore the formal and structural relation between the arch and its centring*.

"The protagonists of this corpus of new work, consisting of a table, a writing desk and a shelving system, are the first and last stages of the Roman bridge building process: The wooden centring, a temporary structure that is crucial to the construction of every bridge, and the paving. The result of this multifaceted exploration is a union between the fragmentary lines that characterise the centring and the typical aesthetic of the arch, achieved by the layering of stone facing slabs called Conci."

*Note: Centring is the name of the temporary formwork that supported the stones used in building an arch, up until the keystone locked everything in place.

It's worth noting that veteran furniture designer Moor realized an endgrain-to-endgrain glue joint wouldn't last, and he's separated each piece with perpendicular-grain-oriented shims, to get a face-grain-to-endgrain glue joint.

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Rod Parker-Rees

a year ago

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I am no engineer but surely an arch depends on compression forces. Half an arch, as in the shelf supports, is not using compression so loads would tend to pull the joints apart rather than push then together, as in a full arch. So those face grain to end grain joints are going to rely entirely on the strength of the glue!

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- Jason Blandford
  
  Rod Parker-Rees
  
  a year ago
  
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  yep; that, or the shelves are secure based on their connection to the vertical piece even without the half-arch supports. the design is cool, though.
  
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