Just yesterday, we were marvelling at just how tiny apartments are getting in Cape Town.

You can now buy a place with the added convenience of having your kitchen in your bedroom.

So much for not eating in bed.

If you find yourself in a small space, as many of us do with the high cost of living these days, then you might want to check out some of the insanely smart design happening in the world of furniture.

Here’s The Telegraph:

[Ikea]has announced plans to pilot a series of robot-powered furniture, designed to save space in small homes, from 2020.

It predicts that major cities will become more crowded and that smaller living spaces will fuel the demand for compact furniture in homes.

Ikea joined forces with Ori, a spin-off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, to create a unit that turns a flat from a living room into a bedroom at the push of a button.

It’s all very smart:

The room will be controlled via a touch pad or smart speaker, and will retail in the US and Canada for around $10 000 (roughly R150 000).

Seana Strawn, Ikea’s product designer, said: “Instead of making the furniture smaller, we transform the furniture to the function that you need at that time.

“When you sleep, you do not need your sofa. When you use your wardrobe, you do not need your bed.”

Unless you sleep on your sofa, in which case, this would be a step up.

As developers move toward making apartments smaller so as to accommodate more people in a single building, products like this will become increasingly popular.

In other words, Ikea seems to be ahead of the game.

[source:telegraph]