Tables and mushrooms are an obvious match. In fact, furniture in fairy stories is always made from mushrooms or their lesser-regarded toadstool cousins.

This humble fungus has a lot going for it in the engineering sense as well. It is an elegant construction, getting the maximum coverage while retaining stability with the minimum support. It is a wonderful example of how nature provides optimal design characteristics.

And that’s obviously what Brazilian Designer Nagib Orro focused on in using Spectar™ copolyester sheet to develop a mushroom-shaped table for the São Paulo Design Centre.

“The qualities I saw in the material inspired me,” Orro says. “I was able to create the table with minimal material and yet still enjoy excellent mechanical strength.”

One of those qualities is the excellent vacuum forming capability of Spectar™ sheet. “It seems obvious, but it is important to emphasize that the more process problems you can solve early, during the design phase, the greater the possibility of success,” Orro explains.

This is not the first time Orro has borrowed from nature’s idea bank. Through his ecologically-grounded Orro Architecture + Design Studio, he has used everything from grass to orange peel to iron wire.

So a table combining inspiration from nature and a clear, tough plastic sheet that can be formed into the most intricate of shapes really is ‘mushroom magic’.