Modern furniture is having an identity crisis. A couch can no longer be content as a simple couch, now it must be able to convert into a bed, or a desk, or a stove (yes, a stove). The houseware-gadgetry isn’t always as functional as it may seem, and much of it never gets past the prototype stage, but Greg Beato writes for the Smart Set that the dual functions imbue our lives with a “luster of utility.”
The motivation behind the overly complicated stuff goes beyond saving money and saving space. Beato writes:
We are on a spiritual quest to attain higher and higher levels of seamless efficiency and fruitless productivity, and our iPhones can’t shoulder the burden of our dreams entirely by themselves, can they? We need furniture that is as promiscuously versatile as Swiss Army knives — chairs that are 300 percent more chair-like than normal chairs, coffee tables that blossom into dining tables, stoves you can sit on without setting your ass on fire.
Source:The Smart Set
