Furniture is an integral part of any home, it sets the tone for it and contributes to the essence of the home. As pleasing as aesthetic and visually intriguing furniture can be, people are now shifting towards furniture designs that are more focused on function and utility, and one such interesting genre is Smart Furniture! Tech-enhanced furniture is a whole new ballgame, catering to our multiple needs, and making our daily lives more comfortable. From smart work desks that run on food waste to smart beds that charge our devices and come along with an integrated home theatre system, smart furniture is in a league of its own! And, we’re exploring a few super innovative and unique designs today.
The Hariana Tech Smart Ultimate Bed was designed to have everything you will need to relax within your bed frame. It has an integrated reclining massage chair with a remote, a built-in Bluetooth speaker, a bookshelf, a reading lamp, an air cleaning system, an area to plug-in and charges your devices, a foot-stool that opens up for extra storage, and a pop-up desk for the ultimate WFH setup, Netflix marathon or cozy reading hours. The sound system also features an SD card slot, an auxiliary port, and a USB port.
This herb garden design named Home Garden takes care of all these minor inconveniences while making sure your plants thrive! The design lets you have access to fresh greenery 365 days a year without sacrificing any counter space or causing a mess. It is compact and works wonderfully for small urban apartments or big suburban houses. What makes this herb garden unique its compactness because it makes it invisible in your kitchen space. Designer Igor Abakumov drew inspiration from his own life experience for this. “My mom is a real culinary virtuoso and she often complains about the lack of specific greens in the store. And then I got the idea to design a home garden that will be built into the kitchen and will delight with greenery all year round,” he explains.
Kuube comes in three different sizes, each of which offers the same services to varying degrees. The Kuube Nano, their mid-sized bench, is solar-powered and accommodates up to four people, complete with a WiFi hotspot, two USB chargers, two wireless Qi chargers, and a single display screen, which provides environmental information like weather, air quality, and UV index. For the makers behind Kuube, adapting their conceptual design process to help mitigate the current global climate crisis in micro mobile ways (i.e.; city bikes, electric scooters) was their top priority. On the choice to generate each smartbench with solar power, the designers behind Kuube say, “Living in the times of climate crisis we believe it is very important to achieve sustainability in as many ways as possible…Our goal is to achieve sustainable smart cities [through] micro-mobility.”
The Nanoleaf Shapes are infinitely customizable, like a jigsaw puzzle with no real end-goal. You can create the shape or graphic that you want, and the smart LED panels do the rest of the work. The panels can light up in as many as 16 million different colors and can be customized within their smartphone app. The LayoutDetect™ feature allows the individual LED panels to identify the shape and layout of your design, and enables them to work in tandem with each other, behaving as a singular lighting unit. Once connected, you can use the panels as mere ambient lights, although they’re capable of much more.
The NordicTrack Vault comes in and literally aids you with the training at a professional athlete’s level thanks to the iFit trainers enrolled with the platform. This smart home workout equipment combines technology, practical usage, and professional challenges only a trainer can throw at you to get fitter by the day. The freestanding smart mirror comes with storage space inside for all your dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and anything else for which space is left. You can call it an all-in-one smart fitness studio with an integrated 32-inch HD touchscreen cum mirror. So, as you select your training programs and follow the instructions of the trainer on-screen, you can actually keep an eye on the correct form of any exercise.
Equipped with a built-in 4K projector that can be synced with a series of devices to binge-watch movies/TV shows on a 70-inch retractable screen, the HiBed by Fabio Vinella (for Hi-interiors) is the epitome of in-bed relaxation. A built-in surround sound system with invisible speakers makes the bed feel more like a movie theatre. The bed is connected to an app and monitors our sleep patterns and movements, adjusting the temperature according to our comfort. It also records body weight, air quality, and noise level to provide a foolproof check on our health. Some good news for the late risers, the HiBed comes with an inbuilt smart alarm system that wakes us up with loud recitations of the weather and daily news.
Inspired by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian’s composition of form and color, the Mondrian setup, by Harry Dohyun Kim, Weichih Chen, and Fuhua Wang, was made to allow a wide range of applications and blend into any interior setting. The aim was to solve three issues we experience with watching TV as we currently do – taking up space, not matching with the aesthetics, and lack of expandability. Urban apartments and single-person households need to maximize their space and should not have to choose between a large appliance and furniture when they can have both. Talking about interior aesthetics, TVs are now increasingly slimmer while furniture remains warm and cozy – this causes a visual mismatch when the two are put together. Mondrian’s design serves both purposes with one seamless structure. TVs are now being used in many ways and need to be able to adapt to the different content it supports, not just static pre-made products.
Dhyan is a Sanskrit word that means focus, care, or meditation and rightly fits this lounger by Sasank Gopinathan has been designed to bring all of that to you. Inspired by the simplicity of the tree of buddha and intricate Japanese zen gardens, the lounger blends traditional eastern philosophies with minimal modern design. It embodies peace and stillness one feels when one connects with nature. Dhyan has three different modes to suit your needs — a standard mode, a water-pond mode, and garden mode. Choose your zen is the new choose your avatar. The standard mode has a platform that doubles as a shelf along with storage compartments to help you get through the day.
The Aliante furniture system was developed in collaboration with Tecno S.p.A. and the aim was to investigate future work scenarios that as the team thought about the changing trends in behavior and habits. Aliante system offers a versatile working space for both individuals and teams. It features ergonomic seating options, more practical table surfaces, power outlets, and charging stations all placed in a flow that is suited to maximize comfort and productivity. Its extensible rail structure supports all the modules of the system and gives it the flexibility to be configured to any space – it can be set up in a line, as a corner setup, or even as a stand-alone system if you have a smaller space. The structural skeleton can be accessorized and expanded. Designed by Miriam Yassin, Juan Salazar, Andrea Tortone, and Karla Zesati, Aliante can be easily assembled into diverse arrangements, enabling architects to structure the internal spaces of airport lounges (or any other space) and define flexible coworking areas that work in the favor of those who spend time there.
A portmanteau of the words Lamp and Balance, the Lance night-light and wireless-charger is the kind you’d stop to admire for two reasons. Firstly, it’s a cute, quaint product that sits obediently on your tabletop, but at the same time, it charges your phone, so you’re not distracted by a screen. Its relatively flat design doesn’t have any sharp edges, making it feel instantly friendly, and the warm LED light on the top can be changed in color as well as intensity to soothe your room with a wash of ambient light. The Lance at the same time also serves as a wireless charger for smartphones, thanks to a slot right beneath the light wide enough to slide your phone too.
For more smart furniture designs, check out our previous round-up posts here!
