I truly believe the right furniture designs make or break a home! After all, furniture is an integral part of any home, it sets the tone for it and contributes to the essence of the home. You can express your tastes, preferences, and personality via the furniture pieces you choose for your living space. They are an extension of you. Now, as pleasing as aesthetic and visually intriguing furniture designs can be, people are now shifting towards furniture designs that are more focused on function and utility (that simply put make our lives a whole lot easier) 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! They’re an explosive meeting of IKEA and Tesla! 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. Another interesting detail about the Hariana bed is a password-protected safe box for you to store your most precious belongings – for me, it would be my passport and snacks!
This table is called a Clock and I want you to keep that in mind for the rest of this story. Clock was designed to be compact and fit in the growing trend of smaller living spaces. The designer wanted to create something that seamlessly blended into our workdays (especially when working from home!) without disrupting our office hours or eating habits. The hybrid station converts food waste into energy to power itself wirelessly but also includes the systems to be plugged into a wall if needed. It is an innovative product that combines technology and functionality to sustainably manage waste and encourage more people to shift to natural/renewable energy sources. When you aren’t working, simply slide the parts back and close the product into a slim bench. In its closed state, only the power icon and energy levels are visible, simply tap the power icon to light up the panel.
The IKEA STARKVIND air purifier comes in two variants, a floor-standing model (in black and white) or a side table version (in a dark or light finish) – costing $129 and $189 respectively. Mind you, to have access to all the smart functions via the compatible app, the $35 smart home hub needs to be purchased as well. The air purifier will hit the IKEA stores from October 2021 in the U.S., so keep an eye on this one. While their form factor is a bit different depending on the intended use-case scenario, on the inside they contain the same three-filter system. This layered filtering system captures bigger particles like hair or dust, 99.5 percent of small airborne particles measuring 2.5 micrometers, pollutants, dust, pollen, and even bad odors are not spared.
Meet the COMODO shoe closet that doubles as a pouf to sit on while you wear your freshly cleansed pair of sneakers for the weekend basketball game. The name is derived from the Spanish word “Cómodo” which means convenient and pleasant in Spanish. Design Studio Designer Dot and designer Hyeona Cho have ideated a cool shoe closet loaded with new-age sanitization tech to keep your pair of shoes moisture-free and free from any bacterial or fungal build-ups. Taking inspiration from modern multifunctional furniture that has compactness and minimalism at its core, the shoe closet solves a very basic but important purpose.
Meet the Duoo Bed designed by Andrei Mogila for Zegen which brings a pragmatic approach to winding down after a long day’s work. The aesthetically crafted furniture piece combines minimalism, smoothness, and geometry of lines to appeal to anyone. Duoo is the result of prime attention to detail when it comes to design aesthetics. Usability-wise, the bed brings the convenience of charging mobile devices or battery banks right from the headboard. Plus it has dedicated led night lights on each side for late-night readers which bring the convenience of privacy without bothering your mate. Keeping comfort and visual neatness at the core, Andrei has managed to strike the right balance of form and function.
Designed for use by the public, both the Fluid Cube and the City Snake primarily function as city benches with the same technical attributes. The Fluid Cube is a 9 cubic meter cube structure that partially encloses two parallel benches with an overhead roof for shelter during bad weather. The City Snake, a 7.5-meter outdoor bench that curves and bends to provide unique sitting options to travelers looking for a bit of respite. While the two structures provide seating for the public, they also come equipped with solar panels that generate power for some of the structure’s more technical features. Raised parts of the City Snake accommodates traditional solar panels, while solar cells are overlaid on the Fluid Cube’s glass roof. The solar panels on both of the structures yield power to use the built-in USB charging outlets, the WiFi hotspots, as well as the benches’ lighting systems.
Dubbed the Coway Icon Air Purifier, this is a reworked and modified variant of the plasticky box-like utilitarian purifiers. It boasts a smaller and flatter form factor to sit along a wall, presenting users with more flexibility in room placement. The quiet and powerful Icon integrates smart technologies to be more than a simple box doing its chores – it comes with its own smartphone app that can be used to control the functions of this air purifier remotely. The app also provides a status report of the air quality and its lifecycle, informing when cleaning or replacement is necessary.
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.
Designed by Modern Sprout, the Smart Landscape Growframe is a minimal frame that can be mounted on any wall on your home, and whose functionality is more complex than its simple looks! It nourishes all kinds of plants – from ones that seek low light, to ones that seek bright light. Once mounted on a wall, you can slide your favorite plants into the Growframe, and connect to the Modern Sprout app. The app is a complete godsend! The app features an on/off switch and can be used for customizable programming and pairing recommendations for partial shade, partial sun, and full sun plants. You can easily select and switch between light settings.
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 smart bench 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.”
