💼 Work from home, Murphy Bed style
"Alexa, open sesame."
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Ori | Pocket Office
Ori, the “robotic” space-saving furniture startup, announced a new addition to their product line, the Pocket Office — a home office module that expands into a small workspace during the workday, and stows into a TV console after clocking out. Riding this year’s WFH megatrend, Ori is leveraging it’s density-focused design philosophy to offer the studio equivalent of backyard office pods (business is booming). The Pocket Office is an interesting attempt at solving this separating work life and personal life conundrum — check it out:
The Pocket Office, like the rest of Ori’s product line, extends into position with the push of a button, or by invoking your resident home assistant (Alexa, etc.) — in the case of the Pocket Office/Closet, a linear actuator is permanently fixed to the baseboard to push the desk back and forth (product photography conveniently occludes the baseboard-heater-esque actuator visible whenever the desk is stowed). Apparently, the guide overloads/stops with a force of ~20lbs to prevent crushing a loved one. For some reason, Ori celebrates the incessant, cheap-sounding whine of their actuators with the video below.
It’s hard to design around sound, especially when moving really heavy things (the Pocket Office weighs between 595lbs and 725lbs depending on the options), but with a rumored price approximating the Pocket Closet (~$3.5k), it should be… quieter. In addition, the systems requires at least a 7ft cube of free space to deploy/stow, which seems pretty tight for most studio apartments…
Can’t a “switchable” home office space be smaller?
Panasonic released a humble mini-cubicle in Japan over the summer in the Komoru —
Ironically, Ori’s name is derived from the Japanese word for “fold” — easily recognized in origami — while the “folded” Ori Pocket Office occupies way more space than the Japanese alternative. I’d prefer to work in the Pocket Office, but live around the Komoru.
Anecdotally, there’s something to be said about simply keeping a home office space tidy in terms of keeping work life from creeping into personal — maybe there’s a middle ground in something like Cable Thread desks (…genius).
Overall, the “WFM office” space is ripe for products that thread the needle between an architectural solution in the Ori Pocket Office, and more typical office furniture like Cable Thread.
👁 Worth a Look
While I’m at it… Ori announced another new furniture product, the Cloud Bed Sofa Edition — a modern take on the Murphy Bed, but instead of flipping a mattress into the wall, the mattress is raised and lowered into the “ceiling.” I don’t know how I feel about all that potential energy hovering above my head while sitting on a sofa, like the Sword of Damocles (Bed of Damocles?), but it does remind me of the “Earthquake Proof Bed” that never fails to make me laugh:
In it’s continued quest for world dominance, Amazon announced a new prescription delivery service called Amazon Pharmacy. I quite like the bottle packaging, subverting the classic amber plastic prescription containers and chaotic information they attempt to display — the labels a slight nod to the Target ClearRX prescription containers that achieved cult-like status (Target no longer offers these bottles after CVS began operating their pharmacies in 2016).
BMW is catching a ton of heat for the ever-increasing size of their grilles — just look at the new electric BMW iX. It bears repeating… electric. Why are they leaning so heavily into this vestigial organ?
Also noteworthy, BMW announced their very-futuristic Definition CE-04 will begin production in a few months. It’s clear BMW is pushing into new design directions that will anger purists.