001: WHEN DID MODULAR FURNITURE STOP BEING FUN?
Let's bring back the element of delight
If you follow enough vintage furniture accounts on Instagram, you’re going to eventually notice a certain kind of post. A guy (and invariably, it’s a guy) walks into the frame and starts shifting or unfolding a piece of furniture until it’s transformed, either in shape or use.
On Galerie Balbach, there’s a dude widening the diameter of a rare, 1920s-era footed table, using a complicated mechanism that seems to involve a belt. On DeStudio, the dealer rolls out an elegant Postmodern container, whose triangle point splits and folds down to create a bar cabinet with a mirrored top (for cocaine?) and a sunken cavity (for liquor). On Mid-Century Friends, the guy swivels out three sections from a round, 1980s-era Skovby table, pushes down the triangular insert hidden inside the table’s central column, then proceeds to deftly pull out three interlocking drop leafs like they’re rabbits in a hat. (In truth, a lot of these videos come from Mid-Century Friends, which is a vintage dealer based in Germany, which makes sense when you realize that all of the best vintage comes from Europe, I’m sorry to report.)
Click the below to watch things unfold (pun very much intended).
I started saving these videos a few years ago knowing I’d want to write about them at some point, but also because they triggered a little frisson of joy when I went back and looked at them. When you watch a video like this, you feel something, which is what furniture is supposed to do under the best circumstances.
However, I also feel some amount of frustration for what we’ve lost when I look at these videos. Most of these pieces were made between the 1960s and the 1980s, a high point for expressiveness and ingenuity in furniture design. Many of them weren’t mass produced at the time, although you can still buy and customize versions of that Skovby table new, which I looked into doing when I moved into my Greenpoint apartment six years ago. But these pieces were often produced in small series. They weren’t one-offs. Then, at a certain point, nothing. Why — and when — did modular furniture stop being fun?
Big furniture brands, of course, continue to offer traditional extendable dining tables, often with a drop leaf or two. (This not a small space solution, IMHO. I don’t have the space for two enormous wooden rectangles in my closet. Do you?) But that’s not the kind of thing I’m talking about, and there’s nothing more creative than that happening; independent designers don’t seem to fuck much with the genre at all. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a piece of contemporary modular furniture that was as delightful as any of those featured in this post. Most modular furniture these days involves the smushing together of two or more cushioned seats, or it’s a bookshelf where the selling point is … being able to add more shelves.
Perhaps the best example I’ve ever seen of this kind of furniture is the Bariomat sideboard by Alfons Doerr, a German designer from the 1960s whose internet presence unfortunately exists almost exclusively in the service of this furniture piece. A futuristic rosewood credenza with laminate doors and a pedestal base, it becomes, with the turn of a key and a flip of the switch, a kind of party palace dry bar, its lighted, mirrored drinks cabinet ascending from a hidden compartment in the rear. (Doerr actually patented this piece in 1968, which is possibly why any information about it exists at all, and it was manufactured by Bariomat in a small series.)
THIS PIECE IS UNBELIEVABLY FUN. I often proselytize about the importance of having statement pieces in your home, but can you imagine what a next-level party trick this would be? This is Mad Men, Tomorrrowland shit. This is the kind of thing everyone should be able to have in their house. West Elm could easily make this. &Tradition could easily make this. And yet, this is the kind of thing that I personally have only seen in the movies; in fact, I’ve read that there’s a bar like this in the James Bond franchise, but I’ve only ever seen one Bond movie and life’s too short to do that kind of recon for this newsletter. But even in the year 2025, I can only imagine this cabinet would immediately transport you to that era, when technology made people feel hopeful rather than frightened of what’s coming.
And isn’t that what we need now? Having a piece of furniture that transforms in some unexpected way isn’t that far a leap from “little treat” culture — i.e. considering 21st-century society is an ongoing trash fire, don’t we deserve little moments of delight in our homes? Why aren’t contemporary furniture brands capitalizing on this? I know in my heart the practical answer to this question, which will become an almost annoyingly recurring drumbeat in this newsletter — that modular furniture is likely harder and more expensive to make, and ensuring its appeal at scale is a tricky gambit. But don’t we owe it to ourselves to try?
Because actually modular furniture isn’t just about being fun — it’s about responding to very real human needs and the way we live and adapt to our own domestic space. When I recently chatted with a friend about the theme for this newsletter, he reminded me of the Japanese Metabolists, a group of architects in the late ’50s and early ‘60s, led by Kenzo Tange, who believed that both buildings and homes ought to behave more like living things, able to grow, adapt, and evolve in response to our needs. I read a little manifesto about this on the website of a furniture company I don’t particularly love in terms of aesthetic, but very much appreciate in regards to sentiment:
“As we face an era defined by uncertainty, movement, and the reconfiguration of domestic life, the Metabolist lens offers something we badly need—a way to design for change, not only permanence. Traditional architecture and furniture has long been about finality. Rooms are defined, furniture is fixed, functions are assumed to be singular. But our lives no longer fit those boxes. Remote work collapses the boundaries between office and home. Families expand, contract, and rearrange. Studio apartments become editing suites, dining rooms, or nurseries depending on the month. Why shouldn’t the objects inside them shift accordingly? The Metabolists embraced impermanence not as a problem, but as a principle. They imagined buildings where parts could be detached, upgraded, or rearranged. Not as a gimmick, but as a recognition that life itself is modular.”
Here are some other favorite modular pieces by designers who knew how to have a good time (code for Italian):
The Quadrondo dining table by Erwin Nagel for Rosenthal (above) is one of the simplest but most genius pieces of adaptable furniture I’ve seen. When closed, the table is a bookmatched circle; unfold the wings and it becomes a square to seat larger groups. Kicking myself that this one just sold at Wright for sub-$1K.
The genius Plano table, designed by Giancarlo Piretti (maker of the very best vintage folding chair) for Anonima Castelli in 1971. A fiberglass top splits into four quadrants, allowing you to make a half moon–shaped breakfast nook, a wedge-shaped corner table, or fold away the whole thing flat for storage. I’m partial to the red if you can find it, but Carefully Picked in Chicago recently had the same table with cool institutional vibes in fiberglass green.
This lesser-known de Sede sofa, the DS-164/29, is the DEFINITION of fun. The backrest slides 360° on a track, transforming the piece from a sofa to a chaise longue with a simple swipe. The back rest can also split in two, allowing two people to each sit comfortably?! Holy grail. Love Toilet adjacent. This was actually designed by Dutch designer Hugo de Ruiter in 2004, which is still, depressingly, considered vintage.
Ok, a lot of innovation happening around home bars in the 1960s, and we simply are not seeing enough of it these days! I understand people are drinking less, but as a parent, I have always dreamed of my children rolling one like this out into the living room, Sally Draper–style, when we have friends over for dinner. Leif Alring for CF Christensen, 1964
Extendable Flip Flap Lotus dining table by Dyrlund, 1960s. Great table, great name.
It wasn’t really fair of me to use the Anfibio sofa as the opening image to this article, since it is, in fact, fun. Alessandro Becchi for Giovannetti, 1970s
Lastly, in the category of smushing together two or more cushioned seats, I have to say that things are getting weirder and more exciting. Two recent favorite$ include Faye Toogood’s Butter sofa for Tacchini and Philippe Malouin’s Element sofa for SCP, both of which can wrap around to form a fully enclosed conversation pit. The dream.
THE KITCHEN SINK
A selection of links to other news, objects, interiors, and more that have been on my mind this week
Was Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider a THINK BIG! fan? On November 19, Julien’s — the “auction house to the stars” that hosted the David Lynch sale a few months back — will be selling off lots from the estate of the late German multi-instrumentalist, who died in 2020. Among the oboes and Mellotrons and hammertone filing cabinets, I spied a three-foot-long pair of scissors, reminiscent of the offerings from New York’s favorite 1980s-era oversized stuff emporium.
There’s nothing I love more than when a brand works with a designer or a designer’s estate to update an older or out-of-production piece. (If you haven’t seen Old Jewelry’s collaboration with the estate of the late Mexican silversmith William Spratling, you’re in for a treat. I splurged on this sterling silver ribbon link necklace last holiday season, and I haven’t regretted it for a second.) This week, Casa Shop founder Emi Moore debuted her series of cast glass perfume bottles with the artist Jeffrey M. Andrews, reimagined and reworked from an early ’90s design in a new palette. This one with a little nautilus indentation is particularly sweet.
The interior designer Billy Cotton, who famously did the townhouse of Lily Allen and David Harbour pre-separation, is namechecked in Allen’s harrowing new divorce album, West End Girl. Can’t decide if this is a win for design overallsince I wouldn’t want to be caught up in the messy public feuding, but does this represent the first callout of a contemporary designer in popular music?
If you’re in NYC this weekend, stop by the Paul Rudolph Institute to see “Weaving Anni Albers,” an installation with the Italian textiles company Dedar. I wasn’t in Milan this year, so I didn’t see the original installation — which features five jacquard fabrics translating Albers’s original designs into contemporary production — but the Rudolph Institute may be the perfect place to see these. Curator Akari Endo-Gaut designed a Bauhaus-colored railing system from which to hang the pieces, and they mirror the white geometry of Rudolph’s architecture in a satisfying way.
**Today’s newsletter is a special Thursday edition simply because I’m excited to get some of the things I’ve been working on out into the world. Next week, Counter Space will return to an every Tuesday send!
Thoroughly enjoyable read! Thank you! If I may add to the conversation, here's a fabulous modular bed by the one and only Cini Boeri https://www.morentz.com/products/cini-boeri-for-arflex-tuttoletto-queen-bed-in-oak
WELCOME TO THE PARTY, SUPER PAL JILL !!