Avel wanted a meeting table to be as hard to overlook as the people sitting around it. The table was a deliberate provocation inside a larger job, the interiors of more than ten office spaces for a company group in Italy.
Most of the offices asked for sobriety, comfort and a sensible use of space. Some rooms asked for more, particularly where teams met or visitors formed a first impression of the company. Standard office furniture left little freedom over dimensions, materials and colors, so Avel worked with manufacturers willing to go through each requirement with her. The larger pieces were made in the Marche, in central Italy, and the smaller, more experimental ones by makers near Milan.
In Ancona the work became a complete refurbishment, carried out with architects. It covered every room from the reception to the management tables, with custom dimensions, materials and colors. Almost every location ended up with one piece people remembered.
Rome called for light, air and open sky. The principal room received a long table in cream tones, with glass reflections across its surface. Its legs were substantial columns covered in glass and finished with steel details. It was a sculpture as much as furniture, made to order and designed for this room alone. Its length asked for care, yet its look stayed gentle, and people noticed it as soon as they entered.
Milan had a different drive. The principal meeting room belonged to people with strong personalities, used to defending their ideas and expecting others to listen. Avel designed a table of six meters in steel and wood and gave it an ego of its own. Like Rome's, it was a sculpture made to order, with no catalogue behind it. There was humor in the idea and a deliberate provocation. Few people asked how it had arrived. A crane and an external lifting operation brought it into the building, and the installation needed as much attention as the design.
Neither table copied the other, and neither came from a catalogue. Each one took the measure of its room, its team and its city. Avel wanted the people who walked in to find themselves already there.