Terra Mare
Australia
2026An adaptable, forever table of land and sea.
A finalist in the 2026 Australian Furniture Design Prize, Terra Mare is a table whose material is is drawn from local aggregates, inextricably tied to place and repurposed from existing waste streams. The table, fabricated for Melbourne Design Week, is specific to Sydney’s geology, comprising Sydney Rock Oyster shell, Bathurst marble and limestone in a sea-green terrazzo. Other material iterations are composed from the land and sea of particular Australian regions.
A table is the most fundamental piece of domestic furniture. It is where people eat, work, study, talk and sit. In a compact setting the life of the dwelling revolves around the table, not the sprawling sofas of suburbia. Terra Mare proposes a piece of reassuring weight and durability. The aesthetic complexity of the terrazzo is balanced by the simplicity of the table geometry.
Australia’s capital cities sit on radically different geologies, with adjacent land masses spanning from the Tertiary period (0-64m years) to the Archaean (2500m years). Yet beyond mineral extraction, these stones are overwhelmingly put to industrial use, crushed for road base or ground into paint filler. Surrounded by different oceanic conditions, each city also draws on marine environments that produce distinct shell types, discarded in volume as waste by aquaculture and hospitality industries.
The aggregates in the Terra Mare table series are therefore ancient geological artefacts and contemporary biological residues, inextricably tied to place and repurposed from existing waste streams.
Besley & Spresser
Hamish McIntosh
Terrazzo Australian Marble
Felix Engineering
H.E. BurnsDesign
Photography
Fabrication
