Furniture – Page 3

November 7, 2014November 6, 2014

Furniture System is the Center of Entertainment

For better of worse, dining has gotten pretty casual in our modern times, with many people taking their meals on a couch, at a small kitchen table or, if we have one, counter. Paying for and maintaining a dedicated dining room whose main function is to be on standby for the occasional dinner party doesn’t make much financial sense. But having the capacity to properly entertain is pretty sweet, which is why the Smart Living TV wall system by Ozzio Design is pretty sweet. Concealed inside the entertainment center are chambers that hold a collapsing dining table and six folding chairs.

The front panel holds a large TV, which swings out of the way to access the chairs. This makes the system ideal for folks for whom the TV is a room’s centerpiece (not a judgment statement, just a fact).

The system is available in the US through Resource Furniture. The TV rack/storage element can be ordered without the side shelving for $5,300 in a lacquer finish. The “Mini Long” table starts at $2,040, and a set of 6 Nobys chairs starts at $960. Grand total: $10,950.

We know some our readers are going to get in a tizzy about the cost. That’s fine. But hear us out post-tizzy. A dedicated dining room is easily 100 sq ft. In cities like San Francisco and New York, price per square foot for an apartment purchase regularly exceeds $1000–i.e. $100K. But let’s say you live in a city like Washington DC, where one and two bedrooms only cost around $500 per square foot. That’s still $50K. Not to mention, any reasonably high quality entertainment center, dining table and chairs is going to run you at least a couple grand. Depending on your priorities and means, this math is way easier to justify than paying for a room that’s used a couple times a month.

October 28, 2014October 28, 2014

Let IKEA Help You Get Off Your Butt

You know a furniture concept has hit the big time when IKEA has co-opted it. Such is the case with the BEKANT standing desk. The Swedish furniture behemoth is offering the automatically adjustable table in their stores and online starting at $469. The table surface is a rectangle measuring 63 x 31 1/2″. It looks like there will be a corner shaped version as well, though we couldn’t find it on their website. Height is adjustable between 22″ and 48″–the former number being about 8″ below standard table height. We think the ability to sit or stand makes it more likely to be used. It comes in a variety of finishes and has available screens to close it off from invading colleagues. It also carries a ten year warranty on the motor.

There’s not much more to say about the table. It’s designed to be used at offices, so it’s not particularly attractive, thought it’d work as a dining table in a pinch.

But we’ve said it once and we’ll say it again, excessive sitting is a pretty serious health issue. Studies have shown that people who sit less than three hours a day live an extra two years (read more: “Statistics That Will Scare You Sit-Less“). At the end of the line, most of us will probably wish we had those two years and the price–i.e. standing, something we as a species did for millions of years–will have seemed like a bargain.

October 22, 2014October 22, 2014

4 Pieces of Furniture that Mix Business with Leisure

For today’s work-at-home professional there’s often a fuzzy division between home and work life. Particularly in small spaces without dedicated offices, there’s an imperative to create some division lest we sleep through our workday or work through our sleep day. Multifunctional furniture can do this, creating distinct functions for different duties. Here are a few pieces that shift a room’s focus from work to leisure or vice versa.

BLESS

Berlin-based BLESS design studio made this table whose top flips over to convert into a single bed. The table/bed, which features a bunch of storage, would be great for artists who need large work surfaces or for people who have teams. It would also make a good dining table. (It might not be good for people with partners). Gizmodo reports that the unit is available through BLESS’s seldom-updated, confounding website. We’ll take their word for it.

Vitra

Venerated Swiss furniture maker Vitra will be showing off this cool cubicle concept at this week’s Orgatec tradeshow in Cologne, Germany. Inside the cube is a surface that can raised and lowered to be used as sofa, conventional desk or standing desk. While the piece does have a somewhat office-y vibe, we could imagine having one of these in the house as a dedicated office space. We could also see lengthening it to make a bed.

Resource Furniture Ulisse

Resource furniture makes a number of wall-bed/desk or tables. It houses a queen size bed and has a desk on the front. Prices start at $4,150.

Studio NL

The George Constanza, ahem, 1,6 S.M. of Life line by Studio NL features a single bed underneath a desk top. They’ve included a place for a computer monitor/tv and the head of the desk/bed opens to provide ventilation or something. This design seems best suited for the office worker with a horrible home life.

October 21, 2014October 21, 2014

The Best Products for Your Small Apartment Living Room

At LifeEdited, we often show some pretty far out design solutions for small home living rooms. Moving walls, app-controlled interiors, disappearing furniture. But the fact is most people who live in small spaces rent. They have neither time, inclination nor money to invest in spaces they don’t own. For them, finding the right items to make their small living rooms work involves a calculus of effort and expenditure weighed against their commitment to their homes.

For these multitudinous renters looking to optimize their living spaces, LifeEdited has paired up with The Wirecutter and The Sweethome to make a rigorously-tested product guide, specifically geared toward their needs (though the products will work great for those who own).

Since the living room is the hub of most small spaces–for studio apartments, it is the space–we thought we’d start there. The Sweethome compiled a list of products that will make your small living room (or “main room” in their parlance) work great without breaking the bank or requiring permanent installations. The list includes the best folding chair, inflatable bed, numerous storage solutions, stick vacuum, step stool, fan and more. All items were subjected to hours of testing and chosen because of their reasonable prices and space-saving capabilities. Follow this link to see the full guide.

If you’re not familiar with The Wirecutter and The Sweethome, you should be. They spend many hours product testing electronics (Wirecutter) and household items (Sweethome). Rather than giving you a big list of items to choose from, they offer their recommendations for the best item in a given category, e.g. “The best set of headphones under $50.” We referenced them a while back when talking about the paradox of choice–both sites help simplify life, eliminating the often-bewildering array of choices available for any given product, and making singular and solid product recommendations. Continue to their site to see their “The Best Gear for Small Apartments” guide.

September 26, 2014September 21, 2016

Multifunctional Sofa Will Blow Your Mind

For some, hosting the ability to host dinner parties is a fairly important criteria to meet for their home. But if you’re living in 500 sq ft or less, it can be pretty tough to justify the space to house a proper dinner table, much less the chairs to surround it. Spanish designer Humberto Navarro, founder of UNAMO design studio, has a pretty slick solution for this most vexing problem. It’s called 3MOODS and it’s a sofa that hides a table and bench big enough for an eight person sit-down meal. The sofa is even big enough to sleep a compact person…somnolence being the third mood presumably.

The 3MOODS frame is made of sturdy bamboo ply and all the hardware is stainless steel. We think it looks relatively nice, though does bear a striking resemblance to your run-of-the-mill futon sofa.

UNAMO is offering the 3MOODs for €2400 ($3050) without tax and shipping (to non-Euros, they said they’ll ship anywhere). Not cheap, but for certain people, this could be a life-altering piece of furniture.

UNAMO is also running an Indiegogo campaign, whose motivation is explained in Google-translator-ese: “We need that 3MOODS is known worldwide, so we must be present in international exhibitions and fairs such as Milan and Paris; promote our product in shops, through advertising…” Basically, they’re trying to get their business together and make prototypes. Given that they’ve raised 75% of their $13K goal with 25 days left, I’d say their chances look good. We look forward to seeing more.

Via Tiny House Talk

August 22, 2014August 22, 2014

Decorate Your Small Apartment DIY Modern Furniture

There is often a rift between one’s tastes and one’s access to–or willingness to part with–the kinda money needed to satisfy those tastes. You might want that beautiful, $8K mid-century modern sofa that you know will last a lifetime, but your budget is $800 and you’re in a rental you’re not sure you’ll be in for more than a year. Rather than selling blood and hocking all of your possessions to afford the sofa, you do what most people do: go to IKEA. IKEA has the right price, their stuff looks good enough, functions well enough and if you have to toss it (which is de rigueur for many IKEA purchases within their first five years), you don’t feel so bad about it. “Less, but better” will have to wait for the next time.

A new book called DIY Furniture 2 might have an alternative to IKEA. Industrial designer Christopher Stuart put this book together, which contains step-by-step instructions for making 30 pieces of furniture from different makers, designers and artist. All of the furniture is made from easy-to-source materials. And the DIY-phobic need not be afraid, most of the designs require little or minimal carpentry chops.

We’re particularly enamored of the leaning rack by Love Aesthetics, which reminds us of a piece from the IKEA PS2014 collection, albeit sturdier and sleeker. It shows how a few simple, sturdy parts, along with a coat of paint, can make an elegant piece of minimalist furniture.

Similarly, Niccolo Spirito’s Diablo Chair is made of common PVC piping, coated in grasshopper-y green paint to give it a funky, modern look. We can’t vouch for its comfort, but it looks pretty cool.

Head on over to Fast Company, where you can see several other of the designs along or pick up the book on Amazon.

June 9, 2014June 9, 2014

The Most Minimalist Furniture There Is

If you’re looking to de-clutter, streamline and create a home that feels open and minimal, Katy Bowman has a decorating tip: ditch the furniture. Katy, her husband and two children, ages 18 months and three years, have a home almost completely free of any furniture whatsoever. Their choice is less aesthetic than physiological. The Bowmans are consultants specializing in biomechanics which, according to Katy, is “the study of living structures (I study the body) and how the forces created by and placed upon them affect how they work.”

Their premise–one we’ve touched on when writing about using standing desks–is pretty straightforward: the human body and physiology did not evolve to sit on its ass nine hours a day. We are a species, like most, designed to be on the go more often than not. Bowman explains her choice in an interview posted on the SlowMama Blog:

I understand the relationship between musculoskeletal function and the immune system, bone robusticity (density and shape), and functions like digestion and breathing. Having furniture isn’t an option for us [her family], in the same way a cupboard full of junk food isn’t an option for many others. Furniture creates a development-crippling environment in that the stuff literally shapes our body, both in the now and in the future.

In their home, the Bowmans do have some “furniture”: some cushions on the floor, a low, traditional Japanese-style table and some mattresses. Katy says of the mattresses, “both my husband and I prefer the floor, and we noticed our kids sleep better on the ground as well, so we’ve just started phasing the beds out.” And they don’t even use the table, preferring to spread out their food on a platter placed on the floor middle-eastern style. Unlike many homes, the Bowmans have an indoor monkey bar set for the boys to play on.

Their motivation to go furniture-less is health-related, but Katy does note the ancillary benefit that her home is “less cluttered, easier to clean, and instead of needing to go to yoga class for permission to get on the floor and sit cross-legged or do a twist, I do these things way more often.” She adds:

This makes all of us happier in general: As a kid, I dreaded all the chores I had to do, like dusting, simply because my mom liked lots of knick-knacks. Living on the floor has made it easy for my husband and I to stay strong and flexible because we’re essentially getting our “workout” all day long, in short and easy doses. It’s perfect for a working and stay-at-home mom and dad who, frankly, don’t have time to drive for 90 minutes to do something for an hour.

We think the Bowman’s choice an interesting and compelling one–one that is a significant deviation from conventional thinking. They beg the question, “what if the best designed furniture was no furniture at all?”

Read the full interview with Katy Bowman on SlowMama and find out more about Katy on her website.

May 20, 2014May 20, 2014

Small Space Stuff at the 2014 International Contemporary Furniture Fair

As I walked down W 35th Street in Manhattan, en route to the Jacob Javitz Center for this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF), I tried not to be resigned. I tried to not let the memory of past years cloud me from seeing something new and interesting. I tried not pigeonhole high-end furniture makers as people largely catering to customers with unlimited cash and space. I tried to imagine the emergence of a vanguard of furniture makers–they would see their furniture as part of a larger world; a world with an imperative (a moral one no less) to replace excess and ostentation with restraint, modesty and efficiency; this maverick cohort would make furniture that could do as much as it could in as little space as possible. Try as I might, I could not will these things into being.

I’m the problem really. I went in with unrealistic expectations. ICFF is, at its heart, a furniture show for high-end, often “bespoke” stuff (last time this author will use the word “bespoke” on this site). And the fact is–at least judging from the show’s offerings–high-end customers aren’t too concerned about how to fit two bedrooms and a desk in 500 sq ft…unless, perhaps, it’s for their pied-à-terres or nanny apartment.

While there were a few of the usual small-space suspects at the show like Resource Furniture, Urbio and Amina Invisible Speakers, for the most part, there was very little in the way of interesting small-space furniture on display. Here are a few exceptions.

Ecosystems

We’ve looked at this Brooklyn-based maker in the past. Their Modos system (used to be called Snugit) allows you to resize and reconfigure furniture without tools (okay, you might need to saw some wood). Given how often people move nowadays, the need for lightweight, reconfigurable furniture is great. Check out their Kickstarter campaign as well.

Fatboy

Fatboy is known for their square-shaped, oversized beanbag chairs. They are easy to spot due to their large, red Fatboy labels. I have sat on these and don’t find them too comfortable. But the company makes other stuff, like the Baboesjka (pictured above). It is a cushion/stool, where three individual cushions are strapped together. The cushions can be used together or apart and each can be ordered in its own color. These would be really handy for folks (like me) who like to sit on the floor, and for folks who have two or three friends who enjoy doing the same (bet they’d be very popular with Bedouins). While theoretically you could make something like this with three firm pillows and plus-sized-men’s belt, for $260, we think the Baboesjka makes the whole assembly a lot more foolproof. (I had to rip the picture from their site because my son was attacking an inflatable poodle in their booth).

Flowerbox

As someone cursed with a black thumb and love of greenery, I was really excited by Flowerbox. Unlike all those wall gardens that require watering and light and attention, Flowerbox offers lush, green walls made of moss that they claim will do without light and water for five years! Even I could maintain that (though I can’t guarantee there’d be a year six). They offer standard sized, preconfigured panels as well as custom pieces, both of which are shippable within the tri-state area.

Umbra Shift

Umbra Shift is the skunkworks of houseware and furniture giant Umbra. They carry this hanging chair, which will retail for $250. Their representive claimed is could support up to 700 lbs–you could stack five normal sized guests on one, further cutting down on space usage. It’s not super pretty to look at whilst unfolded and not that comfortable to sit in, but it will stash away nicely in your closet.

Folditure

You gotta hand it to Folditure, they can make some compact furniture. They just released a new chair called the Maya due to its resemblance to Mayan iconography. When compacted, it’s only 1.25″ wide and can be hung in a closet. I sat in it and found it quite comfortable. The styling, shall we say (and as we’ve said) will appeal to a very particular buyer.

Artek

These stools by Artek have been around for a while. No matter, they’re still super hot. They work as stools or as tables or…well just those two things, but still, those are useful thing. They stack nicely and their colors would make great accents without being overly flashy. They cost around $300. Each. I’d buy em if I could.

Forgive me if all of this seems a bit cynical. The truth is, there was a wealth of beautiful furniture at the show (most of which was probably too nice for this English-majored author’s eyes to appreciate), and I’m sure I missed many great space-saving items whilst making my laps of the aisles. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that there weren’t many risks being taken–that most of the furniture, though beautiful and demonstrating amazing craftsmanship, was pretty old guard fare.

Furniture has a huge impact on how a home functions. It can crowd out or open up a space. It can eliminate rooms that are seldom needed. It can make spaces function in two or three or four ways, allowing people to live in smaller homes than they might have thought, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. We hope that in the future, there will be more furniture makers who comprehend these opportunities and direct their talents towards not only making rooms beautiful, but making them work.

May 9, 2014May 9, 2014

The Kinder, Gentler, Cheaper Standing Desk

If you knew a simple way of extending your life by two years, would you do it? The question seems preposterous to all but those who are inclined to mug Charles Bronson late at night in a back alley. Well, standing is one of those simple acts. Studies have shown that people who sit less than three hours a day live, on average, two years longer than their bum-in-chair counterparts. Yet many of us with desk jobs frequently exceed three hours before lunchtime.

Of course, it’s not that we, the great seated masses, don’t care about our health: standing for long periods of time gets pretty arduous. A new Kickstarter project may have a solution for those of us looking to start standing up for better health and a longer life, but might not want to commit to standing all of the time.

The aptly named StandDesk is a variable height desk that allows you to raise it up to 45”, high enough to be a standing desk for someone up to 6’ 3” tall. Then when you get tired of standing, you can lower it to 28”, just lower than a standard table height. Going between those heights—and stopping anywhere in between—is as simple as pressing an up or down button. There is also an optional control panel with four buttons that allow you to set customized preset heights.

As is customary with Kickstarter, buying a StandDesk requires a pledge. A minimum pledge of $399 will get you a StandDesk; a price that includes a frame, laminate top, two-button control and motor, but not the cable management tray or shipping ($59 and $60-125, respectively). Prices go up from there depending on options: bamboo ply top, memory control panel, cable management tray. A fully optioned StandDesk will run you $649 (shipping extra).

None of this is as cheap as throwing a couple crates on your desk or buying an add-on like the Ergotron WorkFit (above, starting at $299). But the StandDesk is far more elegant and than those solutions, and, with a 225 lb payload, more rugged.

The StandDesk is considerably cheaper than other adjustable desks we’ve seen, like the Kinetic Desk (above top, $3890) or the X Table ($1500), which is the nicest looking of the bunch, but whose hand-crank might get tedious to operate after a while.

March 11, 2014March 11, 2014

IKEA Bets Big with Small

Consider this: IKEA is the world’s single largest consumer of lumber. In 2012, they sold $37B of furniture across their 349 stores in 43 countries. Love em or hate em, odds are, at some point in your life, your butt has sat on a chair whose name has an umlaut in it. So when this furniture behemoth throws its might into small space living, it’s a big deal.

IKEA has already given considerable energy to small space living. Many of their showrooms feature mockups of small apartments to show what’s possible with their furniture. However, it can sometimes seem like they are shoehorning big furniture in small spaces. Now, they’re going further, designing their PS 2014 collection specifically for compact digs.

The collection is called “On the Move,” so named for the urban, mobile customer it’s designed for–customers who might lack a big space and budget, and for whom the ability to port his or her furniture from one apartment to the next is a big plus. The collection’s promotional video (above) shows young folks carting their furniture around by foot, pedal and public transport.

There are a number of pieces such as the leaning kitchen rack and wire wardrobe that are both lightweight and ideal for spaces with minimal or no builtin closets (a common scenario for many apartment dwellers).

Beyond being lighter to move from place to place, the collection’s skeletal designs seem to rely less on the clunky, warping, delaminating particle board that is the hallmark of IKEA furniture. In its place is more metal and solid wood, which we imagine will hold up a lot better over time–a good thing even if the typical buyer of this stuff might not be thinking longterm.

It’s easy to dislike the idea of a big multinational corporation homogenizing our global interiors. But when that same corporation brings good design and quality to large populations at reasonable prices, it deserves to be taken seriously. We think the PS 2014 collection is pretty cool and will work for the way a lot of people live nowadays. It’s set to release in stores April 1.

Let us know what you think.