Milan Design Week highlights Korea's humble traditional table

At this year’s Milan Design Week, which kicked off on Monday, the humble soban (traditional Korean table) seems to be taking center stage, with an exhibition dedicated to the object opening at the ADI Design Museum as part of the weeklong event.

An exhibition on soban (traditional Korean tables) is seen at the ADI Design Museum in Milan, Italy on April 20. [SEOUL DESIGN FOUNDATION]

At this year’s Milan Design Week, which kicked off on Monday, the humble soban (small, traditional Korean table) seems to be taking center stage, with an exhibition dedicated to the object opening at the ADI Design Museum as part of the weeklong event.

Rooted in a time when people served meals and ate them on their own individual, tray-like tables, the soban has been reimagined by designers who perceive tradition not as something to preserve intact but as something to set in motion.

The Seoul-based studio “be formative” and the duo “Andy & Jong” have brought their versions of the soban to one of the world’s most scrutinizing audiences. Neither design is nostalgic, and each answers the same question in its own way: What becomes of an everyday object when the conditions that shaped it have changed or no longer exist?

Comprising designers Lee Ki-yong and Kim Ye-jin, be formative’s approach begins from the inside out. Rather than highlighting the decorative curves that characterize traditional soban, the studio subdues them into something subtler — “lines that flow naturally within the structure” — to produce a work that is based in tradition but takes on a new shape.

The studio built its soban using 3-D printing, a process that allowed the designers to create fluid, continuous forms that would have been difficult to achieve through conventional materials. The soban’s legs are assembled from repeating parts — a decision that is both creative and practical.

“When a curve repeats, it creates a more natural flow and rhythm,” the studio explained in a written interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily on April 16.

Designers Lee Ki-yong, left, and Kim Ye-jin, of the design studio ″be formative″ [BE FORMATIVE]

Each module is designed as a sculptural unit, allowing the soban to read as comprising individual components or as an assembled whole.

The finish, however, draws from an older tradition. Ottchil (traditional Korean lacquer) is applied over the 3-D-printed surface, bringing together one process from the past and another from the present.

“The way in which two materials and methods of very different characters met felt very interesting,” the studio said.

The ″Gubi Ban″ soban (traditional Korean tables) piece by design studio ″be formative,″ featured at the Milan Design Week [BE FORMATIVE]

The result sits deliberately between craft and industrial production, with that balance extending to the soban’s function. At an exhibition featuring many works that lean toward being art more than anything else, be formative remains committed to the table’s original purpose by focusing on usability through the structure’s stability, refined proportions and ability to be assembled and disassembled.

Andy & Jong, comprised of designers Kim Jong-wan and Andy Migevant, approach the soban from a different direction — outward rather than inward, as well as toward perception rather than construction. Kim and Migevant’s table pairs a traditional lacquered top with a transparent structural base, creating the impression that the object hovers above the ground.

“Removing the weight of tradition doesn’t mean taking tradition lightly,” the duo clarified in the same interview with the Korea JoongAng Daily. “It’s closer to leaving only the essence and stepping slightly away from the forms and structures that have become fixed through their familiarity.”

Designers Kim Jong-wan, right, and Andy Migevant, of the design duo ″Andy & Jong″ [ANDY & JONG]

Their perspective is shaped in part by how Kim and Migevent split their time between Seoul and Paris. Positioned, as they describe it, “somewhere between an insider and outsider,” the two approach the soban with a degree of distance — far enough that they see it not as an established cultural staple but as something that can be made newly visible.

The transparent base does not compete with the lacquered top for attention. Instead, its invisibility sharpens the other’s physicality, making its material presence more apparent. As a result, contrast becomes a way of clarifying rather than obscuring.

And in Milan, where many audience members likely have no prior knowledge of the soban, the duo deliberately “wanted the form itself to be read first.”

According to Kim and Migevent, viewers are meant to register the proportion, balance and contrast before any cultural context. The soban’s meaning should unfold in stages: first as an immediate visual and spatial experience, and then — for those who seek it — as something layered with history.

The ″Floating Heritage″ soban (traditional Korean tables) piece by design duo ″Andy & Jong,″ featured at the Milan Design Week [BE FORMATIVE]

What connects be formative’s and Andy & Jong’s designs is not aesthetic but a shared way of approaching and working with tradition. In both cases, the soban’s origin is neither replicated nor rejected. Instead, it is adjusted through material, form or the artist’s vision so that the art accentuates what already exists or unveils something new.

be formative’s version breaks the object down into parts, allowing it to be reassembled in ways that reflect contemporary production and use. Andy & Jong’s, by contrast, shifts the way that the object is seen by slightly removing it from its familiar context.

An exhibition on soban (traditional Korean tables) is seen at the ADI Design Museum in Milan, Italy on April 20. [SEOUL DESIGN FOUNDATION]

Seen together, the two works suggest less about what the soban was than about what it can still do, not as a fixed symbol but as something that continues to be reworked and renewed.

Milan Design Week, under the slogan “Be the Project” — emphasizing humans as active agents of design — runs through Sunday, though pieces from the event will be displayed at the ADI Design Museum until May 10. Thanks to the Seoul Design Foundation, the soban exhibition will then move to Dongdaemun Design Plaza in central Seoul later this year.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]