Kasia Zycinska and Rohit Rao
2+1 Coffee Table

preview location: 2282 Madison Avenue | Howard Hall

artist statement
The door was originally an exterior door with three raised panels below the door handle and three corresponding lights above. In transforming the door into a coffee table the desire was to preserve the essence of its original form. The grid of the panels and lights wraps around the piece appearing in elevations and sections. Replacing the panels with the glass from the upper portion of the door and using the upper framing for the leg construction allowed us to drop the panels out of the original plane of the door and form shelves. The shift of these panels is highlighted by change of the material (Baltic Birch Ply) that supports them. The absence of a third panel shelf and the grouping of legs at opposite corners of the table creates dynamic potential and sense of tension present in a door that is slightly ajar.

artist bios
Kasia Zycinska was born and raised in Poland and moved to the States five years ago. A recent graduate of University of Memphis Architecture Department, Kasia is currently taking an educational hiatus while she decides exactly what to study in graduate school. As she is fascinated by a variety of design studies, from graphic, to industrial, to architectural design, this is a rather difficult decision. Kasia enjoys obsessively sharpening prisma-color pencils and asking perplexingly unanswerable questions.

Rohit Rao was born and raised in Memphis, TN, and has finally decided to graduate from the University of Memphis Department of Architecture this summer. Although making objects of every scale intrigues him, Rohit’s true passion lies in the design and crafting of furniture. Rohit enjoys forming soap-opera-caliber relationships between the scale figures in his perspective drawings and trying to communicate telepathically with dogs.