Sit on a Grid

Acquiring furniture is hard. Aside from the fact that it always seems way more expensive than it needs to be, so much of it is same old same old, or in some cases, like with new collections at Ikea, same new same new. They have the same futon, bedframe, pull-out sofa, and dining set redesigned in 7 fresh colors every spring, but bring some of it home and you suddenly feel like you’ve unwittingly joined an army of cheerful Swedish robots. (We know, it still sounds sort of appealing, which is what is so weird about Ikea in the first place.)

We’ve recently been in the market for a new set of living room furniture ourselves, so you can imagine our delight when we discovered that there are designers out there dreaming up truly revolutionary and fun things to sit, lie, and linger on. Now we’re just waiting for the Makezine or Instructables tutorials on how to build loungers like these ourselves.

1. TAT-Tris Modular Seating (for Kids)

We like the versatility and constant flux this Tetris-inspired furniture would allow your house to be in. Rather than feeling like you’re comitting to one couch for all eternity, if you got sick of an arrangement, you could just move it around. We can’t help but speculate how fun this seating would be for parties, and approve of how it has shapes for sitting, perching, leaning, and even lying down in case someone needs to crash. Designed to help children learn to collaborate to build big things, we can’t help but think adults could use of a dose of Tetris seating themselves. At least all the adults we know anyway. We hope that Gaen Koh, the Singaporean design firm that dreamed this up, supersizes the whole set sometime soon.

2. Enzo Outdoor Furniture

Perfect for poolside, these durable outdoor pieces put the layout in “lay out.” And just look how fun they are for the kids while mom or big sis soaks up some rays or catches up on some reading. MN*LS, the designers of these behemoth pieces, seem to have understood that the only downside to the design, which already graces the courtyard of the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna, is how much space it takes. Hence, the easy and aesthetically pleasing stack-factor.

3. The Darwin Chair

Everything in all of our projections of the future always looks so clean, but hopefully we will be too entertained and productive in the years to come to spend too much time straightening up. Upcoming creator Stefan Sagmeister had this conundrum in mind when he designed his Darwin Chair, a seat that has 200 sheets of thick paper, each with a unique print, that can be torn off as it gets dirty, or if you just get sick of looking at it. The prints also form a narrative, they chain together to tell the story of the evolution of the earth, including the role that technology plays in that continued evolution today. Seems to redefine the meaning of armchair reading.