Barbican Balcony Tables

Category: Make It Yourself

One of the many benefits of living in The Barbican is the fact that every flat has a balcony. The downside is that you’re not allowed to leave anything on your balcony. The dividing doors separating each flat’s outside space open to provide access for maintenance and window cleaning and - most importantly - the fire escape. Hence a table permanently on the balcony is verboten.

So if you want to occasionally sit and eat or drink or just relax with a cuppa and a good book, you’ll need some sort of folding or stowable temporary table.

A traditional thing like this would not work well because there’s little space for your legs underneath and due to the narrowness of the balcony, little room for your legs outside.

Yes, balcony specific tables exist. But being a design nerd, none of them appeal.

So what’s a design nerd to do but make his own? After a little testing with some OSB, I ended up with what you see below. Still not perfect but more than adequate for my purposes. There’s a table for one, a table for two and a shelf for a glass and a bowl of nuts or a coffee and an ashtray or…you get the picture.

Like other balcony-specific tables, the supports hang of the glass balustrade. The supports and tabletops slot together and friction keeps them in place. Because there are no legs, there’s plenty of space for your own.

The one and two person tables share the same supports. (In fact I think the two person version can get away with just two supports not three, freeing up a bit more space.) The narrower shelf has its own supports.

When I’m not using them, everything disassembles and I can stow the parts flat under my sofa.

There are over two thousand residences in the Barbican, most - all? - with balconies. I’m currently investigating whether there might be demand for these from neighbours and if so, how I might go about producing a larger number of them.

In keeping with the Decmatic ethos, I’m hoping to find a business that uses a lot of ply (like a bespoke kitchen maker, for example) and have them cut the table pieces from their off-cuts. I like the idea of using this to make other construction processes even more efficient (and avoid using up yet more resources).

I have no idea how feasible that is but it’s worth a punt. Wish me luck.