Bistro tables usually have only one central leg. Michel Charlot has opted for four legs: A ploy hinting at Hans Coray’s design. His drawing shows four bent L-shaped aluminium profile legs. They are individually screwed to the tabletop and meet in the central plug-in connection which is located directly underneath the hole for the sunshade. It was visible in the first models when sitting at the table. However, the designer has reshaped the bracket in several steps to make it invisible from the top. The table can be mounted in five minutes, and only four screws need to be tightened. ‘It was my task to keep the parts and thus the costs to a minimum,’ says the designer.

He has managed to reduce the table to fourteen components: the top, four legs, four rubber tips for the legs and five fastenings on the underside of the tabletop to hold the legs. For stability reasons, the fastenings are not made of aluminium but die-cast zinc. To avoid any marks on the 3mm table-top, the fastenings are glued to the underside with a metal adhesive from the automotive industry. The same adhesive is used for gluing the legs. This appeals to the designer: ‘In this way, my work has influenced the re-birth of the classic chair.’ He was not inhibited by working in the shadow of an icon: ‘I was not so much overawed by the icon but rather by the task I was given.’ He prefers to stay out of the limelight: He is not very interested in the role of an original designer who strengthens his name by means of his own designs. His aim is to solve classic industrial design problems, to work out details and to deliberate over optimising costs and quality. In the case of the table, this meant using a minimum of components because: aluminium is expensive, and the price of the table was not to exceed the cost of two chairs.