Sir Gio Table by Philippe Starck

This article forms part of the Decorative and Applied Arts Encyclopedia, a master reference hub providing a structured overview of design history, materials, movements, and practitioners.

The Sir Gio table, designed by Philippe Starck for Kartell, transforms a large dining table into an experiment in transparency, structural precision and visual lightness. A round glass top appears to hover above a clear, branching pedestal whose reflective surfaces distort the room around it. Although substantial enough for everyday dining, the table avoids the visual weight normally associated with a central support.

Sir Gio belongs to a longer collaboration between the French designer and the Italian manufacturer. It also demonstrates Kartell’s continuing effort to treat plastic not as an inexpensive substitute for another material, but as a medium with its own optical, structural and manufacturing possibilities.

Kartell Sir Gio table with a transparent sculptural pedestal and round smoked-glass top — The Sir Gio table by Philippe Starck for Kartell combines a transparent moulded pedestal with a round glass top.

Sir Gio Table: Object Details

Designer: Philippe Starck
Manufacturer: Kartell, Italy
Collection: Aunts & Uncles
Presented: Salone del Mobile, Milan, 2015
Production reference: Kartell technical sheet dated 2017
Materials: transparent thermoplastic technopolymer pedestal and laminated glass top
Dimensions: 120 cm diameter × 72 cm high
Type: round pedestal dining table

Kartell’s current product description emphasises the technologically advanced mould used to create the central support. The moulded pedestal provides the stability required for the broad glass surface, while different top and structure finishes allow transparent, smoky and coloured combinations. The result is both technically demanding and formally direct.

Philippe Starck, Kartell and the Aunts & Uncles Collection

Starck developed Sir Gio as an extension of Kartell’s Aunts & Uncles family, a group of transparent furniture that explored large-scale injection moulding and reduced material presence. The table was presented by Kartell and Starck at the 2015 Salone del Mobile. Kartell’s later technical documentation identifies the production model as Sir Gio 2017.

The design emerged from a partnership already associated with ambitious plastic furniture. Earlier Starck designs for Kartell included La Marie, a transparent chair moulded in one piece, and the Louis Ghost chair, which translated the outline of a historical armchair into clear polycarbonate. Sir Gio applies a related idea to a much larger load-bearing object. Instead of making transparency ornamental, it uses transparency to reveal the pedestal’s thickness, branching geometry and structural concentration.

The Culture of Plastics, a historical study indexed by Consensus, places Kartell within more than six decades of experimentation with plastic furniture and interiors.¹ The company’s significance lies not only in individual products but in its repeated collaboration with designers and manufacturers to refine plastic as a high-quality design material. Sir Gio belongs to this lineage while reflecting twenty-first-century tooling and production control.

Injection-Moulded Engineering and Sculptural Form

The pedestal is the table’s technical and visual centre. Four inclined supports rise from a broad footprint and converge beneath the glass, producing a form that recalls a flared column, an inverted vault or the branching of a tree. Curves soften the transitions between the supports and the central body, preventing the base from reading as an assembly of separate legs.

Injection moulding allows this complex geometry to be produced as an integrated form. However, a large transparent component is exceptionally demanding. Wall thickness, flow, cooling, surface quality and the avoidance of visible defects must be controlled across a substantial mould. Starck described the project as an evolution in injection-moulding sophistication rather than a simple stylistic gesture.

The 120-centimetre glass disc distributes the functional surface around a single centre. This removes corner legs and gives seated users comparatively open space beneath the top. At the same time, the wide lower stance resists overturning forces. The pedestal therefore unites the table’s stability, circulation and visual identity rather than concealing engineering behind applied decoration.

Transparency, Reflection and Material Perception

Transparency does not make Sir Gio disappear. Refraction, reflection, overlapping edges and changes in thickness continually redraw the support. In strong light, the pedestal produces bright highlights and darker internal contours; against patterned flooring, it captures and distorts the surrounding geometry. The table can seem visually light from a distance while becoming optically complex at close range.

Research by Cheng, Mugge and de Bont found that designers use transparency to enrich visual appeal and product experience, improve comprehension and demonstrate functionality.² Sir Gio illustrates several of these intentions. Its transparency exposes how the pedestal expands towards the floor and glass top, yet the refractive material also makes that structure appear less fixed and more responsive to its setting.

The glass top extends the optical theme while remaining materially distinct. Glass provides the rigid dining surface; the moulded polymer supplies the sculptural support. Their shared transparency visually joins them, but differences in edge colour, reflection and thickness prevent the object from becoming entirely immaterial.

Transparent Sir Gio dining table surrounded by pale green chairs in a formal interior — A transparent Sir Gio table introduces a contemporary optical centre within a formal dining room.

Colour Combinations and Interior Context

Sir Gio has appeared with clear, smoky and coloured components. The top and pedestal can be coordinated or contrasted, shifting the emphasis from near-invisibility to saturated colour. A transparent base with a smoked top preserves the legibility of the silhouette, while a tinted pedestal concentrates colour where the structure is thickest.

This adaptability helps explain the table’s use in both contemporary and historically furnished interiors. In a minimal room, its concentric geometry can act as the principal object. In a more decorative space, transparency allows flooring, wall treatments and surrounding furniture to remain visible through the base. The table does not become neutral, but it occupies space differently from an opaque wooden or metal pedestal.

The interior photograph demonstrates this dialogue. The table’s clear support echoes the pale dining chairs without matching them materially. Meanwhile, the glass top reflects the pendant light and objects placed on its surface. Its modern manufacturing language sits against framed artwork, stone flooring and traditional furniture, showing how transparency can mediate between contrasting periods.

Awards and Critical Recognition

Sir Gio received an Archiproducts Design Award in the Furniture category in 2017. According to Starck’s official account, the jury selected it from more than 600 candidates for its design and manufacturing qualities. In 2018, it won the NYCxDESIGN Award in the Residential Dining Tables category. Kartell reported that the latter recognition particularly acknowledged its material research and innovative use of polycarbonate.

These awards underline the connection between appearance and production. The table’s visual effect depends upon industrial precision: the clear base would expose inconsistent flow, rough transitions or poorly controlled surfaces. Its refinement is therefore inseparable from the tooling and manufacturing processes that generate the form.

Material Innovation and Environmental Responsibility

Historical discussions of plastic furniture often celebrate freedom of form, repeatability and colour. Contemporary evaluation must also consider feedstock, energy, transport, repair, durability and end-of-life pathways. Sir Gio’s technical ambition does not remove those questions, and the table should not be described as environmentally preferable without product-specific lifecycle evidence.

A 2025 study by Trucillo, Chaouali and Portioli compared plywood, polypropylene and polycarbonate in a furniture redesign and found that sustainable material selection requires structural, environmental and cost analysis rather than a single material assumption.³ That study did not assess Sir Gio, so it cannot establish the table’s footprint. It does, however, provide a useful framework: designers should evaluate material quantity, mechanical performance, expected service life and carbon impact together.

For an existing Sir Gio table, long service, careful maintenance and responsible reuse are more meaningful than treating it as a short-lived fashion object. Transparent surfaces also demand attention because scratches, abrasions and unsuitable cleaning products are visually prominent. Owners should follow Kartell’s current care instructions for the specific finish.

The Sir Gio Table in Contemporary Furniture Design

Sir Gio demonstrates that visual lightness does not require structural thinness. Its pedestal is materially substantial, yet transparency allows the eye to move through it. The design therefore creates an intentional tension between actual mass and perceived absence.

It also challenges the conventional hierarchy between support and surface. In many tables, the top is the dominant plane and the base remains secondary. Here, the top is geometrically simple while the support carries the expressive work. The clear pedestal becomes a lens through which the room, occupants and tabletop are seen.

Within Starck’s work for Kartell, the table extends an investigation of dematerialisation, historical memory and industrial spectacle. Within Kartell’s history, it represents another attempt to make plastic technically credible at furniture scale. Sir Gio’s lasting interest lies in the convergence of those concerns: an advanced moulded component, a familiar dining-table type and a constantly changing optical presence.