Tabula is a critical design project that explores how we form bonds with objects through one of the most primitive objects imaginable: a table. As consumers, we have come to view our relationships with belongings as disposable encounters, easily replaced with more compliant alternatives that blend into our lives effortlessly. Yet, a strong relationship demands effort—it requires respect, compromise, patience, understanding, and time.

This project explores these dynamics through material temporality, using a surface made of kinetic sand that captures and reflects users' interactions. Through a week-long first-person ethnographic study, the surface served as a tool to examine how material affordances influence self-reflection, compromise, and communication in a human-object relationship. By combining reflective writing with systematic forensic analysis of physical traces, the project weaves a layered narrative. The table is no longer a passive object designed to serve us, but an equal participant, one that collects, holds, and reflects memories of care and conflict.