This piece of furniture, designed by the Maestro with Bruno Morassuti as a unique piece for the Club 44 is now manufactured by Agapecasa for the first time

Agapecasa, the brand created by Agape to reissue the original designs of Angelo Mangiarotti, introduces the Club 44 table to the collection. The table was custom-made in 1957 as part of a total renovation of the Club 44 cultural center in the watchmaking capital of La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland.

The Club 44 in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland - Archive images.
Photo credit: Courtesy Agapecasa

Curated by Angelo Mangiarotti and Bruno Morassutti, the redesign of the center focused on an interplay of intriguing perspectives and geometries. Other furnishings were also designed for the occasion, including an interlocking model of auditorium seats, today part of Agapecasa’s Mangiarotti Collection in a single version. The Club 44 table is a modern yet timeless piece, a vivid evocation of the culture of good design embodied by one of the most intriguing and multifaceted 20th-century Italian masters of architecture and design.

Club 44 table - round shape
Photo credit: Courtesy Agapecasa

Club 44 table - round shape
Photo credit: Courtesy Agapecasa

Modularity and Poetry

Its defining characteristics are its modularity and strongly architectural three-piece design, which gives each element space to express its own poetic character: the truncated conical supports, originally in beola stone and now in concrete, the graphical surface of the top, and the elegant, technical cross T-section steel frame cut at 45° that both unites and distances them. The table builds a deep connection with the space, recalling several elements of Club 44 by echoing the metal used in the structure of the auditorium’s balconies. Design was a way of being for Angelo Mangiarotti, who considered objects, architecture, and works of art to all be parts of a dynamic and open unified whole.

Architectural structure of the table, consisting of three design elements.
Photo credit: Courtesy Agapecasa

Club 44 table - elliptical shape
Photo credit: Courtesy Agapecasa

Club 44 table - elliptical shape
Photo credit: Courtesy Agapecasa

Forms and Dimensions

There is an elegance and sculptural beauty to the dialogue between the material solidity of the base and the simplicity of the top in its numerous variations and finishes, creating a diverse family united around the central feature of the base. The top is available in four shapes - square, elliptical, round, and rectangular - reaching dimensions of up to 100x300cm in the version with two supports.

Top shapes and finishes
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Materials and Finishes

Any material must be thoroughly explored, discovering its strengths and weaknesses, in order to build a design based around its qualities. The Club 44 table is characterized by a short list of carefully chosen materials: concrete for the base, steel for the cross-shaped frame, glass and wood for the top. In contrast, there are numerous finishes available for the 30mm birch plywood top with exposed edges, with three shades of Slovenian oak or seven variants of Forbo natural linoleum.

Club 44 table - rectangular shape
Photo credit: Courtesy Agapecasa

Club 44 table - rectangular shape
Photo credit: Courtesy Agapecasa

About Agapecasa

Angelo Mangiarotti and Agapecasa: the “Mangiarotti Collection”

In 2009, after years of fruitful and engaging collaboration with the Master on a number of iconic projects for Agape, the friendship, the affection and the admiration for Angelo Mangiarotti, naturally lead the Benedini brothers to the acquisition of the production rights of the majority of the works in his archives. The Agapecasa brand is born, destined to give space to the original re-editions of the “Mangiarotti Collection”. As of today, the collection consists of 14 projects executed carefully following the drawings of Mangiarotti, and based on the reliefs and study of the original models. The projects carried out by the maestro from the early fifties onwards have been thoroughly analyzed from the technical and constructive point of view in cooperation with Benedini Associati, then further checked and re-interpreted to meet the changing needs of our time and adapted to today’s current standards of quality, strength and safety requirements. The “Mangiarotti Collection” faithfully reproduces some of Mangiarotti’s most famous projects, now made taking into account the demand for a more contemporary production, introducing only minimal variations in construction, but carefully preserving the theoretical, compositional and formal aspects of one of the great artists of the twentieth century.