the table is social infrastructure.TABLES is a platform that forms households through making, activation, and testimony. Participants design and build their own dining tables in an intergenerational cohort. Each table is then activated in the home, photographed, and shared city-wide.
We believe the household is the oldest and most powerful civic unit. TABLES restores the table as a site of connection, ritual, and shared life.
VISION
Originating in Chicago, TABLES envisions a revival of the table as a civic and relational institution—one capable of renewing bonds across age, culture, and experience. The platform advances an ethic of household formation, intergenerational connection, and the restoration of everyday life as a shared practice.
COHORT MODEL
Cohorts — Households join a cohort and design a table.
Build — Tables are built through an intergenerational woodshop process.
Activate — Tables are delivered and activated in the home.
Testify — Activations are documented and shared through public testimony.
Cohorts are hosted in Chicago in partnership with cultural and civic organizations.
TABLES Project begins in Chicago.
Cohorts form across neighborhoods, reflecting the city’s cultural and architectural diversity. The city becomes a civic horizon for testimony, circulation, and public encounter.
CHICAGO AS CIVIC GROUND
TESTIMONY
Every table is photographed in use by a local photographer. These images witness the diverse daily rituals, relationships, and ordinary beauty of household life.
Testimony from each cohort circulates through exhibitions, publications, and city-scale installations.
ORIGINS
TABLES Project was founded in Chicago by artist and educator
Nathan Miller. Drawing from woodworking, photography, and social design, the project brings households together through building, eating, conversation, and testimony.
TABLES continues to unfold in partnership with Chicago’s cultural and civic landscape.