Bowling Alley Tables: Explorations in Furniture Design
“Made to take a pounding, these lanes have experienced their fair share of tough times.”
Pieces of Saskatoon's history were fated for the landfill in the fall months of 2009. Luckily we made phone calls fast enough to keep a few of The King George Bowling lanes off of the dump truck. We made sure they were in our hands for safe keeping, as fast as we could.
Made to take a pounding, these lanes have experienced their fair share of tough times. Rock solid and worn in (not out!), we knew they would make for fantastic table surfaces.
The lanes are incredibly dense, which makes them heavy. Using this material as a table top was going to require a solid frame underneath it if we were going to make it functional and safe to use.
We overcame two design issues by installing scaffold framing with casters, modified to work with the table. The scaffolding is built to take weight, and the casters allowed us to keep the heavy tables portable.
The amount of bowling lane material we salvaged was enough to build five desks in total. The flagship desk is constructed entirely out of bowling lane, and we use it as a collaborative meeting table in The Two Twenty.