Table Manners

A competition entry for Horst Arts and Music Festival - 2025 'Table Manners' is a site-specific intervention poised atop an old industrial structure. The stilted design works with the existing to facilitate a space that is economical yet does not attempt to rewrite or conceal existing visual history. The proposed design instead is a lightweight pavilion juxtaposing the heavy concrete base below. Transparency throughout the design ensures the views to the surroundings are maintained and maximises the experience of being on a rooftop. This space provides occupants with a place to interact as well as look out and observe from. At the centre of the pavilion lies an 11-metre-long table, accompanied by an eclectic mix of marketplace-sourced chairs. The variety of chairs around the table signify that all are welcome to use and interact at the table. The dining table as programme conceptually draws from Sarah Wrigglesworth’s ‘Disorder at the dining table’. The long table, designed to seat approximately 40 people, is intended to acknowledge the interactions and reciprocity that play out on the plane of a table.