These wooden shelving units and tables have been designed by South Korean designer Lee Sanghyeok to look like scaffolding (+ slideshow).

The Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) furniture range by Lee Sanghyeok includes two shelving units and two tables of different sizes.

The lightweight wooden furniture features a similar criss-crossing structure as building scaffolding and is fixed together with polished brass joints.

Sanghyeok claims that scaffolding can be seen as a metaphor for a designer who, like himself, lives and who works in a foreign country. "Scaffolding is is always passed by, constructed and moved away without much attention, but is still a necessary element in construction sites," he said.

The Useful Arbeitsloser (Jobless) project was first exhibited at Nomadismi at Gallery Altai, Milan earlier this year.

Sanghyeok Lee studied at Design Academy Eindhoven and now runs his own studio in Berlin, Germany. His past projects include a table where closing one drawer causes another to shoot out at random, which won second prize at the [D3] Contest at imm cologne in 2012.

Other furniture we've featured on Dezeen recently includes an expanding shelving unit by Stephanie Hornig that can bunch up or stretch out depending on available space, storage units made with textile skins by Meike Harde and furniture by Emiel Remmelts that require concrete blocks, bricks and magazine file boxes to prop up one end.

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Photography by Jaeuk Lee, courtesy of Lee Sanghyeok.