Working Across Scales: Architecture, Furniture, and Everyday Use

The Note

Designers often talk about working across different scales; the distinct mindset and parameters required when designing a building versus a room, or a building versus an entire community.

At COPA Architectural Design, we work across multiple scales. Our practice includes individual dwellings, apartments, artist studios, and larger multifamily and urban projects, but also extends to furniture design. Each scale informs the others, allowing ideas to be tested, refined, and re-applied with greater precision.

When working at smaller scales, concepts that shape our architecture become more concentrated. We rely on simple, honest materials to create highly functional objects and spaces that respond to how people actually live. These materials serve multiple goals: aligning with client needs, offering lower-carbon alternatives to conventional solutions, and adapting to the increasingly hybrid ways many of us work, gather, and rest at home.

The Elevator Coffee Table and the Kenzan Dining Table emerged from this process, not as isolated objects, but as architectural studies in structure, movement, and use, translated into furniture.

Elevator table shown closed in light maple wood, styled as a low table in front of a sofa on a textured rug — fig. 01

The Elevator Coffee Table was initially conceived for a small New York City apartment that could not accommodate both a dining room and a conventional living room layout. Positioned between two sofas, the table functions in its lowest state as a simple coffee table, holding candles, books, and other objects that help frame conversation.

Axonometric diagrams of the Folding Elevator table illustrating internal structure, folding mechanisms, and open-to-closed configurations — fig. 02

Through a system of interlocking dowels and routed grooves, the table lifts and folds outward to reach the height of a dining table—transforming the surrounding sofas into seating for meals.

Detail view of the Folding Elevator dining table showing solid wood joinery, rounded hinge connection, and light maple grain — fig. 03 · detail view of the folding elevator dining table showing solid wood joinery, rounded hinge connection

Folding Elevator dining table shown in its closed bench-like configuration in light maple wood on a textured rug — fig. 04 · folding elevator dining table shown in its closed bench-like configuration in light maple wood on a textured rug

Top view of the Folding Elevator dining table fully closed, revealing clean linear seams and a compact rectangular form — fig. 05 · top view of the folding elevator dining table fully closed, revealing clean linear seams

Folding Elevator dining table shown in its open configuration in light maple wood on a textured rug — fig. 06 · folding elevator dining table shown in its open configuration in light maple wood on a textured rug

During the creation of these prototypes, what we often refer to as a “happy accident” can occur: a functional outcome that only reveals itself through the act of making and testing. In this case, a third mode emerged. When the table remains at its lower height but is folded outward, it becomes an extra-large coffee table, one that comfortably occupies and anchors a more spacious living room.

Folding Kenzan dining table fully extended in light maple wood, showing sculptural legs, concealed bracing, and integrated linear openings — fig. 08

Experimentation with folding mechanisms in maple led to the development of a full-scale dining table that adapts to the varied demands of contemporary living. Today, living rooms often serve as the default space for workouts, video calls, holiday gatherings, television, quiet reflection, crafting, and meditation. This table was crafted to move fluidly between these activities, providing a stable surface when needed, while remaining compact enough to give way to messier or more spatially demanding moments.

Folding Kenzan dining table fully extended in light maple wood, with integrated linear openings, ikebana flowers, and candle setting — fig. 09 · folding kenzan dining table fully extended in light maple wood, with integrated linear openings, ikebana flowers

Folding Kenzan dining table shown partially folded, highlighting its transformable structure and integrated ikebana opening — fig. 10 · folding kenzan dining table shown partially folded, highlighting its transformable structure

Folding Kenzan dining table fully closed into a compact sculptural form, with light maple wood and integrated display surface — fig. 11 · folding kenzan dining table fully closed into a compact sculptural form, with light maple wood

The Kenzan Dining Table builds on these explorations of adaptability and weight. It utilizes standard SOSS concealed hinges and cabinet struts to allow individual tabletop elements—each approximately 2.5 inches thick and weighing roughly 50 pounds, to lift and fold with ease. While substantial enough to act as the visual and physical anchor of a gathering, the table is carefully engineered so that a single person can transition it between configurations.

Embedded within the table’s legs are hidden compartments designed to hold small kenzans used for ikebana floral arrangements. These moments introduce a quieter layer of use, allowing flowers to emerge directly from the structure of the table itself. In practice, the compartments make decoration inseparable from the object, further integrating activity, ritual, and furniture.

Folding dining table closed as a console, dressed with candles, flowers and a draped runner — fig. 12

Together, the Elevator Coffee Table and the Kenzan Dining Table reflect an approach to design rooted in adaptability, craft, and use over time, where furniture is not static, but responsive, and where architecture’s concerns of structure, movement, and gathering are distilled into the scale of the everyday.

Folding dining table opened and set for a meal — fig. 13

COPA (Cordero Pardee) is an architectural design practice with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Santo Domingo.

Working Across Scales: Architecture, Furniture, and Everyday Use

The Note

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