Futuristic Furniture Is On It’s Way

For those of us who live in a cramped apartment or smaller sized home, we soon will have the luxury of freeing up space literally. With new innovations, comes new designs and engineering. A company known as Ori (short for Origami) can automate your furniture, incorporating the power of robotics. These pieces of furniture, will move in different ways. These furniture pieces, fold up or move up into the ceiling among other possibilities.

Hasier Larrea, is the founder and C.E.O. of Ori. They mentioned, even movable walls will be a thing where they can both open and close off rooms. All of this is rather futuristic and the way the world is moving. Compacting people in largely populated spaces, is already abundant in Asia among other places.

All of this is controlled by an app from someone’s iPhone for example. Robotics will assist people in their daily lives, making things easier for them and the most of their limited space. Housing is such a premium in New York City, San Francisco and other places.

One Seattle-based architect named Chris Gerrick, said he has been talking with clients who want to design homes based around robotic furniture. It really is an interesting idea. He said: “Back in the day, it was mechanical tech driving the technology like with Murphy beds. Now it’s digital.”

Bumblebee is another furniture system like this being created. Currently, neither the Ori or Bumblebee furnishings are available just yet, but will come soon. At the moment, people will have to wait a little bit longer. The only furnishings readily available are through either by developers and landlords who can buy directly. Perhaps all of this is a test to see how well these products will do.

The theory is, renters will pay a monthly premium that’s slightly more than what they’d pay for a non robotically-furnished apartment. It has become evident, that the old throwback designs are outdated. New designs and innovations need to happen asap.

One company from California called Starcity, operates co-living spaces in both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Their prime target audience, are urban professionals who rent bedrooms and have grown-up dorm-style, with weekly house dinners and other group events. Jon Dishotsky, the C.E.O. of Starcity said, “We’d love to see if this can really scale to hundreds of thousands of units.”

There are questions about this type of furniture such as…what happens when the power goes out? Backup power generators will have to be included or offered in an optional upgrade. Another concern is safety.

For example, Bumblebee’s furniture will fold up conveniently but the furniture weighs upward of 260 pounds. Additional concerns will have to be addressed before all of this goes mainstream. However, it will make way to a new more technological world. This is the direction that everything is headed it seems.

(Source: New York Times)