His design features an outer table equipped with dents, grooves, bowls, and bumps to enhance the preparation and cooking process, while a central table is dedicated to serving and communal dining. Included within the design are mortars (woduro) and pestles (woma) for grinding cassava, along with seating inspired by both traditional Ashanti stools and typical kitchen stools found in Ghana.

Through its form, Communion aims to elevate the act of pounding cassava to the level of performance, one person pounding, another turning the mixture in an almost choreographed fusion of movement and sound that is akin to dance.

Giles Tettey Nartey is a British-Ghanaian designer, researcher and architect. His work references African craft cultures and investigates the potential of reconstituted objects  as a tool for the reimagination of artefacts, practices and rituals. Giles leads a diploma unit at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and also teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture where he is undertaking a design PhD.

His research-based design practice is centred around the medium of assemblage as a time-based critical artistic practice. He is interested in new relationships of film, performance, installation, space, and objects. He explores the west African quotidian and the activation of his work through everyday practices, often using designed objects as well as found and archival material

“Communion focuses on the rituals that bring to life the objects in our homes, presenting them not just as lifeless items filling our spaces but as artefacts rich with emotional and spiritual meaning, animated through our daily routines. For me it’s also a question of functionality, and whose functionality we admire and give space to. The piece celebrates a practice that is so local to West Africa presented in a new way which gives emphasis to the ‘communal’ by allowing multiple people to participate in the process of making fufu. The everyday local ritual is therefore transformed into performance, exposing the beauty I have always seen in everyday Ghanaian life.” – Giles Tettey Nartey