Orbite - Mer et Cratère Coffee Table
by Altin
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The Mer et Cratère is a low oval coffee table in dark wood. Two circular depressions are carved into its surface. Shallow, smooth-edged, precisely placed. They sit like craters on a planetary body, which is the point. Mer et Cratère translates as Sea and Crater: the name reads the table's own geometry as topography.
Three stout cylindrical legs carry the oval slab. The stance is compact and grounded, the leg-to-top ratio deliberately heavy. Rich dark wood grain shows through the finish, varying in depth and tone across the surface.
There is no applied ornament. The design's entire visual interest comes from the carved depressions and the light they hold. In direct overhead light, they read as shadow; in raking light, as volume.
From the Orbite collection by Altin Studio, founded in 2023 by Yasmine and Mehdi. The collection takes celestial naming as its organizing logic, and the Mer et Cratère carries that reading with precision: a geological surface brought into the domestic interior.
W 130 x D 90 x H 35 cm
W 51.18 x D 35.43 x H 13.78 in
Materials: Hand-carved wood
About
Altin
Altin is a Tunisian design studio founded in 2023 by Yasmine, a Paris-trained interior architect, and Mehdi, a civil engineer. Their practice is rooted in direct engagement with ancestral Tunisian craft, treating traditional techniques not as cultural reference but as working method.
The studio draws from Tunisian artisanal traditions, some tracing back to the Neolithic period. Yasmine and Mehdi treat these practices as living knowledge: skills transmitted across generations, shaped by the country's layered cultural history. Their approach to organic minimalism places material at the center. The weight of dark-stained wood, the texture of patinated copper and bronze, the surface imperfections that industrial manufacture eliminates. These are not flaws to correct but marks to preserve.
Altin was recognized by Architectural Digest's AD100 list, a distinction rarely accorded to studios as young as theirs.
On Monde Singulier, Altin presents the Orbite collection: coffee tables, a lounge chair, a console, a cabinet, and a stool, built around a consistent vocabulary of rounded, organic forms and raw finishes. The Ganymède cabinet combines woven straw with patinated copper hardware. The Mer et Cratère table carries shallow circular depressions carved into its dark wood surface. Each piece extends the studio's artisanal sensibility into domestic space.
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