Orbite - Petite Ourse Stool
by Altin
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The Petite Ourse is the smallest piece in the Orbite collection and perhaps the most sculptural. It is built from stacked rounded forms in dark polished wood: two stout base supports, a wider central disc, a small sphere at the top. The proportions form a compact, stable silhouette that reads as a small monument as much as a seat.
It functions as a stool or accent side table. In practice, the distinction matters less than the object's presence, a totemic form in dark wood that holds its ground in any interior context, from beside a bed to the end of a sofa.
Smooth, polished surfaces display dark wood grain in varying tones. The stacking reveals how each turned element was individually formed before assembly: base, disc, sphere: three distinct shapes resolved into one.
Petite Ourse translates as Ursa Minor, the Little Bear constellation. Altin's celestial naming convention holds throughout the Orbite collection: the smallest piece carries the name of the smallest northern constellation, compact, self-sufficient, gravitationally coherent.
ø 50 x H 68 cm
ø 19.69 x H 26.77 in
Materials: Hand-carved palm 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.
