If you’re ever in need of deciding what shape, color, or character your creations should be, look no further than nature itself. Nature’s got it all figured out with its own intelligent design—after all, it’s all made useful and beautiful for it to survive.
So, when it comes to shaping a living space, furniture and interior designer Radhika Dhumal did exactly that and created a beetle-inspired table that has been making headlines on the internet recently.
If you're looking for inspiration for your furniture designs, then look no further than nature itself
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
This furniture and interior designer from India, Radhika Dhumal, sat down to design a table on a blank piece of paper that soon turned into intensive doodling.
One thing led to another and she ended up with a scribble that was oddly reminiscent of the wings of a beetle. And it wasn’t long until she had a proper sketch of a beetle-shaped coffee table with dynamic “wings”.
“The idea of the beetle table emerged after a lot of doodles and scribbles. It was an intuitive click that made me go ahead with this natural form with a dynamic touch,” said Radhika in an interview with Bored Panda.
Furniture Designer Radhika Dhumal recently came out with a beetle-inspired coffee table
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
Radhika called it the Elytra after the hard shell that protects the wings of certain insects. It’s a beetle-inspired wooden coffee table with fold-out glass-inlay “wings” that spread out (similarly to an insect with elytra as it’s about to fly off) to expand the table’s overall surface.
The table features a circular upper frontal platform that sandwiches the wings and allows them to expand to the sides, as well as a lower table platform and some very appropriate insect-like legs, adding to the look and feel of the beetle table. And no, it does not fly, don’t try it, there’s glass in it, come on.
Specifically, it's a coffee table that can double its surface area by expanding its glass-inlay "wings"
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
“The design process started off with intensive sketches that helped with the concept and its development. This led to creating scaled down mock ups and a selection of CMF simultaneously. Once this process was done, the actual table was made from scratch in the student workshop with skilled assistance,” elaborated Radhika on the process of creating the Elytra Coffee Table.
Some may find the table a bit gimmicky, but it’s both aesthetically pleasing with its sleek and minimal wooden design as well as functional and practical as a table that is small enough to fit in many places and can expand to accommodate more of your coffee-table décor and knick-knacks.
It took around a month for Radhika to craft it from scratch with the help of some skilled professionals
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
Radhika explained that the table took roughly 4 to 5 weeks to craft from start to finish with the help of some skilled furniture specialists. Though it wasn’t smooth sailing all the way as the unconventional design posed its own challenges:
“As the table has a sense of dynamism, the actual challenge was to make sure the movement was smooth and surprised the user. As a designer, I intended to make the table interactive and wanted to bring out the fun element,” explained Radhika. You can certainly imagine kids playing with this and definitely having fun.
“I truly believe that a good design has the power to enhance emotions or the mood and I want to believe that as designers, we have that power and should make the best of it,” elaborated Radhika.
"As a designer, I intended to make the table interactive and wanted to bring out the fun element"
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
Radhika even managed to win an award for it. Namely, the Elle Deco International Design Award for the category of Student of the Year as Radhika was a student in a master’s program in the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad at the time of winning.
And the award wasn’t the only bit of recognition as her table has been making headlines online, which came as a bit of a surprise to her: “I was actually quite surprised as I had never expected any of this. I feel encouraged to design better and contribute to the design community to make a tiny difference in the world from my end.”
Radhika said she got the idea by brainstorming with sketches, until she noticed that they look like bugs
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
Image credits: Radhika Dhumal
As for the future, Radhika doesn’t have a solid plan for what she’ll be doing next project-wise, but she is thinking of creating an entire series of furniture inspired by the Elytra some day, so there’s that.