Ori is the ultimate all-in-one for apartment living. Ori furniture uses “architectural robots” to get the most out of your small space (via Ori Systems)
Apartment living can be a bummer. The rent is constantly on the rise and there's never enough space, especially in places like New York and Chicago. You could spend time looking up lifehacks on Google to teach you to organize better or you can have robotic furniture that transforms your living space. Ori, named after origami, is a new line of robotic furniture that takes a single room, like a studio apartment, and turns it into a bedroom, living room, or walk-in closet.
A collaboration between Ori, an MIT Media Lab spin-off, and designer Yves Behar, the furniture is comprised of “architectural robots” that changes the function of your living space without you lugging heavy furniture. Ori currently comes equipped with a wall of shelved with a pop-out desk, a closet, and trundle style underneath. It runs on sensor-rigged actuators hard-wired to a control panel, which is placed on a wall. All it takes to shift things around is the push of a button (or your voice with future versions). The furniture then glides, slides, and slips into place making the room look entirely different. The speed at which everything changes is determined by how hard you press the button, but with furniture that's changes on its own, you'd think it's best to take its time instead of rushing it. There's even an app that lets you reconfigure Ori from anywhere in the world, which seems a little unnecessary. And to make sure it matches with the current décor of your apartment, Ori comes available in different colors maple, dark brown, and white.
The Ori system rolls out to the masses in early 2017. Don't expect to be able to hop into your car and pick it up at Home Depot. Instead, the company is working with real estate developers in Boston, Washington DC, and Seattle to install the system in apartments. Though if you ask me, New York should've had dibs on this. Ori sounds cool and looks sleek and modern, but as with any new form of technology, there have to be some bugs somewhere. What if you're trying to transform your bedroom into an office to get some work done? What happens if the bed gets stuck half way or if a wall won't glide back into place? Hopefully, Ori works out any kinks before the 2017 release date, but it's still something to keep in mind before completely trusting this new technology.
Micro-units may seem like a good idea considering how the population keeps growing and financial crises making it harder to buy traditional homes, but some people won't be coerced into buying one. Like with anything else, people are adverse to change and may not be able to let go of what a home is supposed to look like. And if you lived in apartments your entire life, downsizing to a micro-unit doesn't sound more appealing than living in a spacious house. Then again, there are people who don't have a lot of possessions and may thrive in small spaces. Look at the show Tiny House Nation; those people make it work somehow. Will Ori take over city apartments? Probably not all of them, but you can expect to see them more if the initial release do as it says.
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