Transformers Furniture

“Transformers, Beds in disguise,” one viewer astutely comments, to a video on a cool space-saving line of furniture.

“Transformers” is the awesome hit film from 2007, in which a Peterbilt truck turns into the top stud Optimus Prime and a yellow Camaro into the likable ‘bot Bumblebee. It’s a marvel for cinematographers to create magic from technology, so much so that I kept wanting to super-slow motion that transformation and figure out how they actually make it happen.

But this space-saving line from Resource Furniture is no science fiction.  It’s as real and as useful as it can be.  Have a look.

An Apple device has sophisticated, cutting-edge technology inside its sleek, minimalist design.  But this furniture is remarkable for its lack of electronics, and its reliance solely on the ingenuity of the designer, engineer and manufacturer.  Yes, Steve Jobs aimed for simplicity of use for his iPhone and iPad.  But transforming a table into a bed is so simple that anyone of us can do it without knowing much about the mechanics of it.

It reminds me of Einstein’s notions of space and time.  These two phenomena are bound up, such that they become one in his terminology, that is, spacetime.  Imagine drawing a point A and a point B on a sheet of paper.  Now fold it, so that the two points touch each other.  You see that the distance between the two points is compressed.  So if you were a traveler, you would dramatically shorten your journey from A to B, provided that the highway on which you traveled could actually be folded like a sheet of paper.   This is the physics notion of a ‘wormhole.’  It’s a passage that allows you to travel to any point in space at some fraction of the normal time.

I’ve been to cities like New York, Tokyo and Stockholm, where space in the places I lodged was clearly at a premium, that is, tight and sparing.  How spacious they would’ve been, if they had acquired Resource furniture.  Paradoxically it’s about compressing more things into such space as underneath the bed and behind the wall, so that you have more space elsewhere.  A family on a budget could therefore live comfortably in a modest home, with two school aged children, for example, sharing a tiny bedroom.

Let’s bring Newton into our discussion now, shall we.  His physics was about motion, force, and mechanics.  While Einstein boldly challenged, and corrected, his outdated notions of gravity, somehow I couldn’t help but see Newton in this furniture.  With some clever use of springs, levers, and pivots, this furniture takes just fingertip strength to transform and set up.  The force of gravity, for example, is neutralized by these devices so well that a 450-pound bed virtually floats down from its vertical position to its horizontal placement.  The aforementioned children can easily tidy up their room and fold up their bed in the morning, and set up once again in the evening, all on their own power.

The company tagline is “Space.  Reinvented.”  That says it all. 

Cool stuff, eh.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD