In collaboration with creative studio Oio, Ikea alongside its research and design lab Space10 recently created a furniture range concept that would use artificial intelligence to tell owners how it can be updated. The Updatables concept furniture aims at reducing waste by helping people visualise extending the life of their furniture. Most of the furniture and other objects today get easily disposed of or replaced, instead of getting upcycled or downcycled. The recently introduced range by the furniture company, which is a part of the ongoing Everyday Experiments initiative, aims at inspiring people to reduce waste and renew the purpose of existing pieces. Read more on SURFACES REPORTER (SR).
The Updatables furniture pieces have been skillfully designed by Oio and Space10 in ways that they can communicate when they were getting worn down by suggesting adaptations only to give them a longer life. The user would have to scan the Updatables furniture piece using an app. With the help of artificial intelligence, the furniture would, thus, have a voice and communicate with its owner its needs. The use of augmented reality would help in visualizing how the furniture can be updated by using extra parts from other pieces of Ikea furniture. For instance, a simple chair can be adapted into a chair-bookshelf hybrid with an added reading light.
Described as fully-fledged evolutions of existing Ikea furniture, the app would reportedly use an evolutionary algorithm, where a piece of machine learning code is inspired by biological evolution to create the new furniture. Each of the upgraded furniture pieces combined with discarded parts is expected to be unique, thereby promoting a circular ecosystem. Updatables, thus, imagines a future where furniture evolves alongside the members of the household.
Image credits: Space10 and Dezeen