Weightless Elegance

It all started about 15 years ago, when brothers Gerhard and Dieter Nuss took over their parents' furniture workshop in Pleisweiler in the Southern Palatinate. A customer commissioned them to redesign a living and dining area – including a large dining table. There wasn't much space to work with and the table was to exude an air of lightness despite its considerable size. Together with André Steverding, the designer responsible for the project, they developed the idea of suspending one end of an L-shaped table from the ceiling with a stainless steel cable and thus making it seem to "float" in space.

Today this model – the "L1" – and several variations of it are permanent features of 3.1 Design's dining table collection. If for instance the structural conditions make it impossible to suspend the table, the tabletop of the "LIV" model provides an alternative in the form of a glass panel that supports it from below. In this case, the transparency of the glass preserves the table's L-shaped appearance. But becoming the proud owner of a 3.1 table can involve far more than merely selecting a model: on request, the chosen table can be tailored exactly to the spatial and architectural situation it is intended for. "There are no fixed table sizes or material combinations," explains Gerhard Nuss. "The biggest table we've made so far was 4.80 metres long and 1.20 metres wide." Whilst the dimensions and materials can be chosen on an individual basis – even silver and gold leaf have been used in the past – the design always retains its L-shaped contours and thus also the sense of lightness inherent in the concept.

3.1 Design is just as consistent when it comes to producing its tables: every single one is made entirely in Germany. The one-offs are produced largely by hand in the on-site carpentry workshop.

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Photos: Christoph von Haussen, Nuss

Nuss Möbelwerkstatt GbR
3.1 Design
Weinstrasse 80
DE-76889 Pleisweiler
Tel. 0049 (0) 6343 9354-19
Fax 0049 (0) 6343 7882
gn@nuss-moebelwerkstatt.de