When the conversation is about furniture, you expect it to be boring. Every time we step into a furniture store the only things you’d ask about are probably price and material. I often have longed for creative furniture, the kind that stands out from the rest of the regular type of furniture. The kind that will make me reluctant to leave the paradise, that is my home. And I realize that until that day come, I have to make do with the Internet once again.

(Image Source: Ron Arad)

And the Internet did not disappoint! Here to impress you are 34 concept furniture (some actually available in the market already) that reeks of creativity. While some might be little too wild for you, they are practical, user-friendly and extremely ergonomic. Shopping at a furniture store may never be the same again.

Recommended Reading: Creative & Modern Office Designs Around The World

Openaire

Openaire is the combination of a laptop-carrying case, work table and a chair, all designed with style and ergonomics in mind. They can be folded up to form a standard-sized bag, allowing you to set up office pretty much anywhere! The only bad news here is, we have yet to see it appear physically in this world.

Communicative Coffee Table

It’s a sliding puzzle the size of a table! What’s more, there is a chalkboard under the table surface where you scribble notes, apologies, or marriage proposals (just a thought) on. Slide any of the tile pieces to the empty slot and the writing underneath will be cleared.

Exhibi-Table

If you’re bored with large bookshelves, maybe this wonderful exhibit table can be a nice alternative to the traditional book shelf idea. It’s the perfect furniture to have for book lovers, and especially if you have a mini-library at home. Place the books you use most often into the empty slots for easy retrieval. And if you run out of books, you can still slot in other stuff in there, so long as they fit the space.

Lean Table

Hexagons rock, don’t you know it? Coordination Berlin decided to go creative by crafting stylish chairs with simple hexagonal shapes, then tried to combine them into different useful creations such as coffee tables for two or meeting tables for ten. All of them are not only inspirational and awesome, but also awesome. Did I mention awesome?

Extensions

Most conceptual products could only transform into something that’s within their own realm, such as from a chair to a table, but Extensions could do more than that. With the same parts you get in the same package, you can build yoru own table, shelf or bench, depending on your furnishing needs. Yes, you can probably call it the Transformers of furniture.

Unstable

Ever dreamt about becoming a superhero but never got your wish? Well, you’re not going to turn into a flying, eye-laser-shooting superhero with furniture, although Unstable can give the illusion that you can break tables! The surface of the table will give way depending on the weight of the object on top of it. And if that’s not your cup of tea, the blocks can also be arranged to spell out personalized messages or be the backdrop of games – chess, anyone?

FIT IN

Apart from its clean design with nice taste in colors, FIT IN talks about what most tables haven’t really tried to achieve: portability. With these tiny minions assembled into one piece, you could bring it anywhere without physical restriction, then expand them to set up your table again, as need be. Best of all, you could modify its size and form according to the environment and your personal need. That’s why it’s called FIT IN!

DIY Building Blocks

Now you can show everyone, especially your parents, that Lego is not merely a toy (or the most dangerous piece of feet-piercing material you can leave lying around). These Lego building blocks exist to let you assemble them into useful furniture with a playful look, according to the package you bought. And if furniture isn’t your fancy, then let’s build a giant dinosaur robot with it instead!

Anti Crise Chair

You have heard of the piggy bank, but have you heard of the chair bank? Yes, this chair is a coin bank you can sit on. Drop in your change to save up for an emergency or just for the heck of it, and when the time comes for you to break the bank, there’s a hacksaw behind the chair which you can use to saw the bottom part off the chair. Don’t worry, the chair will still be intact and you can even slot magazines into the hole once you get all the coins out.

Bounce Chair

Tired of the burning sensation when your behind is tightly stuck to the surface of your chair? Then check out this bouncing chair that has a sensational design and caring feature. Just like a Pilates ball, this chair will keep your body in constant movement according to the direction you move, thus relaxing your muscles and nerves. The only downside here is that you might look like an entertaining Daruma doll!

Bag Chair

It’s a bag that is also a chair! Why hasn’t anyone thought about this sooner? Seriously, we already have laptops that we can carry around, so why not carry around our own chair? This one is made out of bent plywood or polypropylene (in short, slick) and is available in orange and yellow, black and white, or brown – at least in the prototype.

Emperor 1510

It doesn’t matter you’re from a royal family or not, once you sit inside this Emperor 1510, you’re the king of the world. The chair comes with an epic scorpion-styled, highly stable steel structure, tilting capabilities, integrated audio system and even LED lighting for a complete computing environment. Best of all, it only damages your bank account with…* gulp * $6200 USD dollars.

Long Form Library

Long Form Library might not make you feel like an emperor, but at the very least, you would feel like Gandalf, sitting and reading the highest-level magic books in the comforts of this makeshift library. It even comes with plenty of slots for storing books, all within easy reach. The prototype can also rock front and back like a cradle although I’m not sure how that will help with the reading.

Lost in Sofa

There are lots of furniture adopting the concept of empty slots, but Lost in Sofa has really sold the idea to me with its unique design. Just like what the look suggests, you could insert anything like a coffee cup, book or remote control into the sofa, then retrieve it anytime you want! Finally, a solution to the disappearing remote control problem that may actually work!

Swing Chair

Small optimizations could make a big difference, and Swing Chair is the best example to lecture this truth. From the first look it’s only a swing chair that could add some romance to your reading activity, but here’s the magic: the seat can be folded to become a bed, so you could also sleep in it!

Strucchair

Now this chair is just amazing. Theoretically, it violates the theory that a piece of furniture could not be placed on different types of terrain by dynamically adjusting its shape based on the structure of the terrain. A great chair to bring on a fishing trip, camping or even for a picnic.

Picnic Bench

Everything that can be used even after it’s flipped is simply a masterpiece. And that is what this Picnic Bench is. This carefully-crafted bench functions as a table with two chairs as its first form, and once it’s flipped 180 degrees, it will automatically become two benches without any extra configuration needed. A great piece of furniture for big groups.

Curv

Here’s another two-in-one; this time you pick between a stool and table, or a comfy sofa with a side table. You can even prop two together, and work side-by-side with a colleague or have a gaming session with your friends. Also available in wood design.

Loopita

Sometimes you find yourself wanting to quit a study session or to just stop working, and this could be caused by the lack of a comfortable seat or couch. To that, I introduce to you the Loopita! This insane combination of comfort, luxury and loops will make any working session more fun, especially when it is built for two.

Floorscape

Most furniture designers are trying to reinvent the wheel in its own realm, but Floorscape is one of the few that is actually freeform furniture. Its design provides us with absolute freedom to lay out the parts of the seating for the most comfortable and imaginable poses. The friendly creator also showcased some sitting positions best used with this art piece, including a planking pose of course.

Piccells

Here is a beautiful piece of artistic furniture. It’s an inflatable sofa that can be stored away to save space, or pulled out into a semi-circle or a full circle (like what you see below). There are four different styles in the proposed design: "Orange", "Leaves" in green, "Butterfly" in grey and "Foam" in blue. The organic feel (sitting on air) and biologically-inspired design is a great fit for an eco-friendly home.

Feel Seating System Deluxe

With the cost of $7950, you could become the queen of "120 soft and very pleasant balls" that are willing to form a comfortable bed or a sofa for you. Customize it into a comfy bed, a lounge sofa, or something in between – you are limited only by your imagination.

Bed 2 Share

It just looks like a futuristic bed at first, but don’t judge a bed by its cover. This bed has lived up to the spirit of sharing by allowing you to transform it into two individual beds, or two types of benches. Prop it up like a sun-deck chair or let it lie flat, it’s up to you to decide.

OH

Now, this one is a gem. How many times have you have to abandon a book shelf whenever you move to a new place? With this book shelf, you can redecorate your shelf to fit into however much space you have (or that you lack of). Combine several of these shelves together to get a bigger, smaller, longer, wider, taller or freestyle bookshelf for your books. My faith on usability is restored.

Units

If OH is too much of a puzzler for you, try this more conventional look to the same approach. Construct your own shelf design with these "units" – 4 metal boxes with two compartments each and two solid trays to hold the boxes together. Want a taller shelf? No problem, Need a TV cabinet? Can do. The floor is yours.

Full Moon

The design is from 2008 but it feels like it’s from 2018. This wonderful creation will totally defeat its storage purposes, as the moon on the surface of the cabinet glows fantastically in the dark, making it impossible for you to ruin the illusion by opening the cabinet. Now the next thing you should do is dance on it.

Namibia Credenza

Feeling like doing some vandalism on your furniture? Namibia Credenza could kill your urge with its already-awesome graffiti arts. Inside the cabinet is a graffiti – revolution is splashed over the inner walls of the cabinet. But this revolution comes with a price, and for this one, it is $6500.

Kenchikukagu

Meet the ultimate space saver trio, from the land of the rising sun, Japan, where space is really, really something of great desire. These three cabinets can actually be extended a bed, a work desk, and a cooking space. Once you’re done with it, just store it up to save space in your room or home. And it’s actually available for order, for reals, and while stocks last!

Wooden Crates

What, wooden crates? You gotta be kidding me! But don’t underestimate these wooden crates. They have been featured on TV and used in exhibitions. And it actually has this sundry shop feel to it that gives the illusion of freshly baked bread and plucked fruit, arranged nicely in front of the store ready to be taken home by shoppers.

United States Bookshelf

Big fan of United States? This one is for you. Designed by Ron Arad, the bookshelf’s design itself is enough to amaze and amuse your friends and families. It might be too crazy for your precious books to be placed onto this shelf, but again only the artistic or the borderline insane (somethines it is hard to differentiate between the two) will love this wild piece of art.

The Face Shelving

Here’s a naughty design from a playful designer. This book shelf is like a life simulation game, where you grow decorate a face with your books. Place books on the top of the head to give the illusion of a crew cut, some above the eyes for the eyebrows, white cover books for teeth and leave some above the mouth for a moustache.

BILBAO

Nothing is more artistic than having a tree functioning as your bookshelf, the idea is so crazy, it just might work! This BILBAO looks a bit loose at first, but once you look closely, you’ll notice that there are boards behind the limbs, providing a secure platform for the books to be stacked on. If it was up to me, I’d buy some mini-sized green-covered books, just to stack up the mini branches to double as leaves for the decor!

Book Hugger

It can’t hold many books all at once but at least you get to show your books some love. Plus, if it holds, it can be a hat, scarf or coat hanger even.

Line the Rack

Simplicity is the point, and Line got full marks on this. With this 150 mm tall and 850 mm wide block, you could hang up basically anything – as long as they’re not too heavy to break it. Tie them up, or just let them sit in the slot at the back of the block. A simple solution to a shirt hanger, key rack and even mailbox, all in one.

Reflection

Needless to say, the furniture industry is always filled with inspiration and innovation, but the current trend is focused on portability and usability, rather than form and design. Besides, most of these concepts are eco-friendly, factoring nature’s importance into the equation. If you have noticed a creative furniture piece somewhere out there that could rival those in this list, please share it with us in the comments.

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2. 38 “Call to Action” Button Templates That Really Stand Out
3. 40 Creative iPhone Wallpapers To Make Your Apps Look Good
4. Fruit turned Animal Art: 30 Creative Creations

In this post, we are going to discuss a CSS Preprocessor called Sass or Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets.

If you have been following our previous posts on LESS, we are sure that you are familiar with the CSS Preprocessor. Both Sass and LESS are CSS Preprocessors which primarily extend the way we compose plain-static-CSS in more dynamic way using programming languages like Variables, Mixins, and Functions.

Installing Sass

Before we can compose Sass we need to install it. Sass is built upon Ruby. If you are working on a Mac, chances are, you already have Ruby installed. If you may to install Ruby in Windows, use this Ruby Installer.

After the installation is complete, you can go to Terminal (on a Mac) or in Command Prompt (on Windows) then type the following command line in it:

On Mac;

  sudo gem install sass  

On Windows;

  gem install sass  

If the installation succeeds, you will have the following notification in your Terminal/Command Prompt.

Next, we need to select which directory for Sass to watch using the following command;

  sass --watch path/sass-directory  

The command line above will watch every .scss/.sass files in path/directory and whenever one of the files in that directory is changed, Sass will update the corresponding files or create one if none exists.

If we need Sass to generate the files in a specific directory, we can do it this way;

  sass --watch path/sass-directory:path/css-directory  

We can also watch a specific file rather than the directory, with this command line;

  sass --watch path/sass-directory/styles.css  

If the watch command succeeds, something like this notification below will appear in your Terminal/Command Prompt.

Further Reading: Auto-Compile Sass Files with Sass 3

Sass Applications

However, if you hate working through Terminal or Command Prompt, you can use some applications for Sass. The free option is Scout; it is built on Adobe Air so it can be run on all OS (Windows, OSX and Linux).

However, it runs very slow as some have previously reported.

So if you don’t have the patience for it, there are also some paid options. The price varies for each app, Compass.app goes for $10, Fire.app, $14 and Codekit for $25.

Code Highlighting

Although Sass is primarily a CSS extension, your current editor may not highlight the syntax properly. Fortunately, there are already some packages for almost any code editor to enable .sass or .scss code highlighting.

If you are working with Sublime Text 2 like I do, you can use these packages; Sublime Text HAML & Sass and Sublime Text 2 Sass Package, and for an easier way, you can install one of these packages through Package Control.

For other code editors, see below, or try Googling for it.

• This one is a great screencast tutorial on working on Sass with Dreamweaver
• Define SCSS Highlighting in Notepad++
• Sass Mode for Coda. But, it seems this mode has been integrated with Coda as of version 2
• TextMate Official SCSS Bundle
• Espresso Sugar for Sass
• InType Bundles

Sass Language

Sass and LESS actually share some common languages, below are a few of them.

Variables

  $color-base: #000;  $width: 100px;  

The only difference from LESS variables is that the variable in Sass is defined with a $ sign.

Nesting Rules

  header {  	width: 980px;  	height: 80px;  	nav {  		ul {   			list-style: none;  			padding: none;  			margin: none;  		}  		li {      		display: inline;  			a {   				text-decoration: none;   			}    		}    	}  }  

Mixins and Functions

  @mixin border-radius($radius) {    -moz-border-radius: $radius;    -webkit-border-radius: $radius;    -ms-border-radius: $radius;    border-radius: $radius;  }  

Operations

  li {      width: $width/5 - 10px;  }  

Conditional Statement

  @if lightness($color-base) >= 51% {  	background-color: #333333;  } @else {  	background-color: #ffffff;  }  

In LESS you may do a similar thing via Guard expression, which we have covered about in this tutorial.

Final Thought

And that’s it. In the next post, we will start exploring the Sass languages and its companion, Compass. Stay tuned.

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1. LESS CSS – Beginner’s Guide
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4. Working Effectively with LESS: Tips and Tools