UC121
iroko planks and amberlite mortar base
650x300x85 cm
Year built
2025
Function
Dining Table
Status
No longer available
UC121 is, without doubt, the largest table we have made to date, measuring 6.5 metres long by 3 metres wide. It was one of three unique pieces created for the renovation of a luxury hotel on the Sotogrande coast. The project spanned several months, from our first meetings with the architecture studio and hotel group through to the manufacture and installation of the pieces. The ambition was to make a strong statement in the hotel's main dining room.
This table brought together two very different challenges: an ambitious aesthetic concept and a considerable engineering undertaking. Its sheer dimensions and weight demanded careful planning at every stage, from fabrication to transportation and installation, while ensuring that the piece would remain in excellent condition for many years. The design by Iñigo Calleja drew particularly on his engineering background, requiring solutions that worked equally well in terms of construction and aesthetics.
The architecture studio's initial proposal was to support an enormous tabletop on a series of giant natural boulders. It was a striking concept, but impractical: the weight involved would have been excessive for the dining room floor. By that time, we had already developed and tested the possibilities of our own mortar, made from recycled cardboard pulp and reclaimed wood shavings, both technically and aesthetically. We immediately saw it as the ideal solution. It offered the organic, mineral appearance the project called for, while keeping the overall weight within much more suitable limits.
Given the extraordinary dimensions of the tabletop, constructing it in sections was the only viable option. We selected exceptionally wide iroko boards for their subtle, homogeneous grain and generous width, which allowed us to arrange the sections so that, once assembled, the surface would read as a single, continuous piece. The organic outline of the tabletop also helped disguise the joints while visually tying it into the rock-like base.
Both production and installation presented a major logistical and organisational challenge, which we successfully managed through meticulous planning at every stage. The result is a piece of exceptional scale, in which a demanding technical solution serves an ambitious sculptural vision.
