Matteo Pacella and Philippine Hamen looked to ancient Greco-Roman architecture and traditional children's building blocks for this collection of classical furniture.
The 12 piece collection, called La città è mobile! (The city is mobile), is made up of a range of "practical yet poetic" benches, stools, steps, tables, consoles and bookshelves.

Constructed from MDF and finished in blue-pigmented resin, each piece took its design cues from the archetypal forms found in classical architecture, such as grand fluted columns and curved archways.
Milan-born Pacella and Paris-born Hamen also found inspiration in the traditional wooden building blocks that children play with, and how they relate to the basic structures found in antiquity.
Pacella and Hamen based the furniture proportions on the "golden ratio" ? a mathematical rule derived from ancient Greece which exists when a line is divided into two parts, and the length of the larger part ? a, divided by the smaller part ?b, is equal to the sum of a plus b, divided by a.
The golden ratio is often used in the field of design to achieve aesthetic beauty through accurate proportion and symmetry.

The spacing between the columns in the furniture was also determined by the intercolumniation system invented by the first-century BC Roman architect Vitruvius, where the spacing between columns in a colonnade is measured at the bottom of their shafts.
While these structural references are in line with classical ar...