How the Italians Do it: Furniture design for 400 square feet
March 5, 2013
Michael Alexander notes:
This is straight product advertising, but the ingenuity is breathtaking.
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This level of functionality and design is very pricey, but if it let you buy a studio instead of a one bedroom, or a one bedroom instead of a two, it could well be less than the cost of the extra square feet.
The company that sells this stuff actually has an outlet in Vancouver (can’t imagine why!): Resource Furniture, 861 Richards St. It would be interesting to know why Ikea hasn’t brought more engineers into their product design.
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Also, a much shorter montage of adaptable furniture over the century, serious and otherwise:
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I think the precision with which this furniture needs to be assembled is out of scope for most IKEA purchasers (people complain about even the most simple assembly) and IKEA would face a lot of returned damaged items as a result.
Watch these videos and see the imagination of transformers,the technology of James Bond gadgets, the precision and mass production techniques of Lego and Ikea, the ingenuity of origam, and the craftsmanship of Europe and Japan.
It seems that while the rest of the world was putting their energy into applying these skills to pushing the envelope of what can be done with and to small spaces, Canadians have been building bigger and bigger houses, and filling them with cheap furniture from the Brick.
How different Canada would be if we had been putting our energy into such endeavors for the last 50 years.
Nicely designed and quite elegant. However, when it comes to squeezing functionality into small spaces, 1950′s–era passenger rail car designers are hard to beat. A single passenger “Roomette” contained a toilet, fold-away sink and vanity, nooks and crannies for storage, climate controls, hide-away bed and a comfortable fold-down seat with an available removable table. All this, in a space not much bigger than a large, dining room table. Via Rail still operates some of these gems on The Canadian (http://www.viarail.ca/en/about-via-rail/our-fleet).