Sofas are generally designed for two types of positions: sitting upright and lying down when the wife kicks you out of the bedroom. The Cay Sofa changes all that, allowing you to be comfortable regardless of what position you want to take.
How? By being rigged to shape-shift automatically when you move. Parts of it fold-in, fold-out, rise up or fall at an incline, depending on what could best serve your sitting position.
The brainchild of Alexander Rehn, the Cay Sofa is an unusually shaped furniture that looks more like an uncomfortable bed at first sight. Throw your body on there, though, and the thing will adjust based on where you drop your weight using a clever mechanical system that you can also adjust manually to your liking — a tug here and a push there should let you customize it to serve you best.
There’s no fancy electronic brain in the thing either. Instead, it just a series of carefully designed planks (with soft padding, of course) connected by strategically-placed hinges, all standing on angled legs. Having little facility for actual mechanical engineering principles, I don’t exactly understand how it manages the magical shape-shifting, but it seems to do so beautifully.
Of course, the fact that the Cay Sofa is a chair for one single-person use kind of sucks. If you have the space for a rigged-out La-Z-Boy, though, this could make for a more conversation-worthy alternative. The real downside, actually, is it’s a one-off for now, but I definitely would like to see something similar offered commercially down the line.
[via Designboom]