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Useful, Lowbrow Furniture, Badly Executed: The Outdoor Side Table Cooler

By Rain Noe - May 3

in Furniture Design

This is an interesting furniture form, designed for the masses, and always poorly executed. (I have a hard time admitting those two qualities are now permanently linked.) Aimed at the outdoor grilling crowd, it's a height-adjustable outdoor side table with a cooler in the bottom for beers. I'd love to know who designed the first one, but at this point the knockoff genie's out of the bottle.

Keter's version has a pleasant form and inoffensive surfacing, but look at those terrible legs:

The shape of the legs screams "We are trying to save money on plastic."

This version by Bluu adopts an awful molded barrel motif:

This version by Lagoon gets the legs right, I feel, but visually ruins the proportions with the molded wicker basket look:

The overall form is useful, but all of these look janky and they're all made of plastic. I wonder how long the table stays level, over the years, and how easy it is or isn't to adjust the height. To empty these, I assume you remove the table, put one hand on the lip of the cooler and grab a leg with the other to up-end it, but perhaps something more ergonomic could be devised.

It's too lowbrow for the Salone crowd, but I'd love to see them throw 12 prominent industrial designers at this for an exhibition.

o

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Ryan Cee

6 months ago

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I don't understand why cheap products always have to look ugly, for no good reason and sometimes even for added manufacturing costs or steps. Cheap clothes? Plastered with logos and designs. Cheap furniture? Ugly texturing or coloring. Cheap eyeglasses? Ugly styles or colors. The list goes on, as if when you're poor you don't deserve things that look nice.

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Dee An

6 months ago

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> To empty these, I assume you remove the table, put one hand on the lip of the cooler and grab a leg with the other...
There is an internal plug. To empty it you just pull up on the plug.
The user reviews are an interesting resource.

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