#HTE

Yves Béhar + MIT Media Lab = Mechanized Transforming Apartment System

Is your apartment too small? Well, imagine if it could do this:

That’s the Ori furniture system, designed by Yves Béhar/fuseproject and engineered by the MIT Media Lab’s CityHome project, which seeks to wring large-sized living out of the tiny urban spaces we increasingly live in. “How do we maximize our use of these spaces, providing the experience of luxury living without the luxury of size?” Béhar writes. “Better yet, what if your living space could physically transform to create any environment you need? We teamed up with Ori to design a system of robotic furniture: transformable units that can turn 200-300 square feet into a bedroom, living room, home office and closet.”

Béhar refers to Ori as its own entity because although the technology was developed at MIT, Ori has now been spun off as its own company under MIT designer/engineer Hasier Larrea’s leadership. “Ori is specifically focusing on changing the paradigm of space design,” he told Architectural Digest, “by creating tools that allow space to adapt to us and our activities, not the other way around.”

Here’s how the central unit works:

At the touch of a button, the full-size bed configuration transforms to offer a full-scale bedroom, office, and living room. The retractable bed offers both an office and closet with abundant storage space, and a full media console/credenza for the living room. Both units have an on-device console with presets to control the unit’s movement, as well as a corresponding app to reconfigure the unit from anywhere in the world.

The collaboration has developed both full- and queen-sized systems, and we assume they’re referring to the mattress sizes. It appears they’re bypassing traditional retail and are instead directly targeting three groups: Real estate developers, building owners and individuals. You can learn more here.