Boardroom, by its very nature, renders little to playfulness. Everything needs to be serious, wrapped in hierarchy and norms; even the décor and furniture. Enter CHUB table! An acronym for central hub, CHUB table is one boardroom table that makes people sit up and notice. It has been created by architects Ramiro Diaz-Granados and Heather Flood for the board of directors of the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Created after two years of research this piece of furniture is awesomely unique. Its shape, its surface, its color and patterns, all reflect great imagination and a desire to break the shackles, as it were. Enlisting the help of several SCI-Arc students, the duo have managed to create a table that has come to be described in several ways: a grapefruit, a pomegranate, a jellyfish, or even a vagina. Ramiro and Heather explain that the driving force behind the creation of this table was a desire to foster egalitarianism between the board and school-members. The two designers also wanted to communicate to the faculty that they must put as much emphasis on building as imagining things. The result is CHUG, a table 190-foot in diameter and capable of accommodating 25 people around it at a time. The round shape, by doing away with a ‘head’ position, ensures equality among those seated.
CHUB is modular and can even be broken into 11 smaller tables of varying sizes. These wheeled tables can then be used for other occasions like meetings, classes, presentations etc. Smaller size does not mean a loss in the individuality though, and each one of these is as impressive on its own as the whole CHUB. Various components of CHUB are made of a staggered stack of plywood planks, which are joined with puzzle-piece joints. The top is colored lime green while sides retain natural color of the wood. Playful glass tops create a diversion by letting one see the wood inside. Tops are adjusted for height as one moves further from the core, facilitating view. The core itself is a central computer that’s accessible via several individual pieces. That’s enough talk. Check out some images of this wonderfully crafted table in the gallery below.