Mario Tsai Studio Creates Pixelation In Physical Form With The Grid Bench

Known for its innovative pieces produced in a minimalist aesthetic, Mario Tsai Studio has looked to digital image processing as the inspiration for ‘Grid Bench’. In the formation of a digital image, it undergoes a series of stages. Typically, this begins with the automatic arrangement of information into a rectangular grid of pixels. Utilizing 5mm plywood sheets, the design studio has mimicked this rectangular gridding of pixels in physical form, which is both functional and unique. Horizontal plywood sheets are set at precise intervals and form the main structural component of the bench. Employing a hidden plug structure, the horizontal plywood sheets are then fixed onto vertical plywood sheets and appear to seamlessly balance atop—a detail which the design studio tells us “creates a sense of floating and an unstable critical state.” The studio has also taken inspiration from color intervals that occur in pixelation, producing the bench in a green colorway. Here, nineteen individual shades of green have been used—one for each piece of plywood. ‘Grid Bench’ mimics both the structural and visual components of the processing of pixels and the formation of an image.