Douglas Fanning is a rare breed: a cerebral architect (a lecturer at Parsons, The Rhode Island School of Design, and The University of Pennsylvania, to name a few) who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty.
Fanning directs DYAD, an architecture and fabrication studio he established some twenty years ago, leading a team that designs and manufactures his home and architectural creations. While his works are clean, fluid, and uncompromising, what’s most remarkable about them is that they’re made by hand. To execute works of such balance, proportion, and beauty this way out of metal, glass, and stone requires a strenuous discipline few have and fewer exercise.
Fanning’s process is manifest in his Bean coffee table, an abstract creation of two modular pieces featuring amorphous, dappled bronze tops, and curved, blackened steel legs. The piece, which functions with an elegant simplicity befitting its form, is an example of his supreme artistry and craftsmanship. The product of years of experience, Bean requires a near-herculean contribution of time and energy: each of these extraordinary coffee tables represents over 200 hundred hours of painstaking and expert labor.
A look through the images in the slideshow below will reveal the intensity with which Douglas Fanning approaches each of his pieces.
