Kraken Mare is a minimal table created by Paris-based designer Nicolas Dorval-Bory Architectes. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest natural satellite in the Solar System. At an approximate distance of 10 Astronomical Units, it is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only known body in space, other than Earth, where clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found. Kraken Mare, its largest known sea, was discovered by the space probe Cassini in 2006 and named in 2008 after the Kraken, a legendary sea monster. The architect’s fascination for Titan, among other celestial objects, is closely linked to its unsettling similarity to Earth, while being made of extremely different compounds (atmosphere of nitrogen and methane, lakes of liquid ethane and methane). This familiarity, that he refers to as das Unheimliche, is a great source of inspiration and reminds him that the farthest, the deepest into space, time and scales that one looks at, the diversity and complexity of nature is large enough only to focus on grasping it, relying on its beauty. Here the complex shape is just an isoline, the simple relation between geology, liquid hydrocarbon, and gravity, 1,2 billion kilometers away.

Photography by Maxime Delvaux