When it comes to furniture, there are a lot of innovations that have come out, whether you’re talking about materials, design, or even the way it’s assembled. Most of them are elaborate and seemingly expensive, but there are also some that follow the minimalist aesthetic and therefore can be something more affordable for the general market. School furniture is not something that designers pay attention to but this one from a Milan-based designer and design professor focused on a low-cost and easy-to-assemble desk and chair.

Designer: Claudio Larcher

The Paco y paco set of a table and chair for schools uses the barest minimum when it comes to materials. He used sheets of wood cut in the basic shapes needed to assemble into furniture. There’s also some rope, a wooden ball to help with the assembly and to knot the rope, L-brackets for the cross-member, hinges so that the parts can still fold flat, and grommets so the ropes used won’t fringe. The idea for this concept is to have something that’s easy to put up and then disassemble and store somewhere if they’re not needed. The designer says the movement of the ropes and the assembly required is similar to closing a backpack.

When you see the un-assembled desk and chair, it looks like just some pieces of wood with rope attached to it. But once you pull it together and attach what needs to be attached, you get your minimalist desk and chair and they look stable enough to hold a student and their school supplies and books. Since it’s minimalist, it’s just a simple and similar design fro the desk and chair, with no part to lean back on for the latter. But if you’re looking for the basic functionality, then it serves its purpose.

I don’t know how comfortable it would be for the students to sit on their minimalist Paco y paco chair or how much stuff they can fit into the table. But the mechanism and the minimal assembly required is something that can be studied and applied to other furniture, if what you’re looking for is low-cost, efficient, and minimalist.