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Design Concepts: Our Ideal Ultramodern Living Room

by Matthew Zuras on February 19, 2010 at 02:05 PM

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never progress from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over them, nevertheless.

Readers, we know that we just got through the holidays not long ago, but we have decided exactly what we want for Christmas this year. We've culled concepts for the perfect high-tech living room, and since we've got about ten months until December, that should give our designers plenty of time to get their creations realized, packed, shipped, and wrapped under our Christmas trees. (Although, we're not sure how one goes about wrapping a color-changing wall, but that's why we're journalists and not designers.) From accessories to furniture, we've got it all figured out. Take a look at our favorite living room concepts and be sure to let us know which ones you're planning on getting for us. No double-gifting!

Unfold wall stickers by PEGA

Wall stickers have the tendency to look really awesome at first, before quickly losing their novelty (and, in our experience, beginning to peel). PEGA, one of our favorite design studios, has rethought the idea of wall stickers as simple decoration. Conceiving the wall sticker as an object with potential function, PEGA designed the Unfold collection to include a lamp, radio, and scent diffuser. Unfolding like origami, the trompe l'oeil lamp, that isn't quite trompe l'oeil at all, is our personal favorite. How recursive!

Change It! by Amirko

Amirko's Change It! is another innovative wall intervention, and we want it now. Each of the tiles acts like a pixel; the visible side is actually one of three planes on a rotating block, each side painted either black, white, or part of the color spectrum. Changing the color on the wall is as easy as rotating the blocks to the desired color, which means an endless variety of visual combinations.

Carbon fiber lamps by Marcus Tremonto

Treluce Design Studio, headed by Marcus Tremonto, created these beautiful one-off lamps in response to a challenge from gallerist Patrick Brillet to utilize the unique properties of carbon fiber. The incredibly strong, impossibly thin carbon fiber of Modern Carbon 451 encases electroluminescent electronic paper, creating a beautifully airy piece of lighting with seductive curves. And what geek could resist the Pixel Bulb?

Rug With Scale by Kwon Sunman

As writers who frequently work from home, we find ourselves to be a little more sedentary than are our journalistic brethren who are forced to pound the pavement looking for scoops. So we love the idea of a chic shag rug with a built-in weight sensor to help us monitor our wintertime pounds. Red Dot Award winner Kwon Sunman's Rug With Scale is equipped with a sensor to track your previous, current and goal weights. Plus, you can remove the adorable LED display to clean the rug (or to ignore the reality of your beer gut on particularly slothful days).

Breathing chair by Wu Yu-Ying

We're cheating with Wu Yu-Ying's Breathing chair, because it's strictly analog. But this chair is smart! Besides looking like something out of the next century, Breathing is composed of recyclable thermoplastic polyurethane that conforms to each sitter's body. It starts out as a cube, but the front and side axes give with weight. The sides then ergonomically fold down to serve as height-appropriate armrests, while the front molds like memory foam to provide what looks like a highly pleasurable sitting experience. Oh, and it won a Red Dot Award, too!

Tags: amirko, design, designconcepts, features, kwon sunman, KwonSunman, marcus tremonto, MarcusTremonto, pega design, PegaDesign, top, treluce, wu yu-ying, WuYu-ying

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