Collectif Etc: La Planche

The Collectif Etc, with French designer Malo Mangin, have designed and produced a foldable table and bench to stimulate a different approach to public spaces.

Everything has always happened there, around the table.

The “living collective” is cooking, eating, chatting late at night. The “working collective” makes decisions, responds to emails, make plans. All these moments follow each other and sometimes merge.

Our table travels a lot and often moves, it travels by van and lands on public squares, in wastelands, in vacant apartments. Once arrived, it immediately becomes the theater of the collective. Everything must fit in the truck and disassemble quickly. For a long time, our table was a formwork board and trestles. To sit, we always improvised with cardboard stools or chairs gathered on site. When we invite people, we put a large plank on two chairs and we tighten, benches are more welcoming.

In February 2014, we started a phase of research that has allowed us to define our principles of production and achieve our first prototypes with the French designer Malo Mangin. We manufacture furniture for the places we inhabit, from local resources and our current tools. Being artisans gives us the opportunity to decide each step, from the design to the use. Each production is an occasion for new learnings that we want to share and make accessible to all.

Collectif Etc is a French association since January 2011. Its founding members are graduates in architecture and met at school at the National Institute of Applied Sciences of Strasbourg. In 2012, the group completed its Detour de France on the theme of the “civic fabric of the city”. The same year was awarded with the Young Planners Awards.