Design  

Carl de Smet has developed a concept for self-assembling furniture that’s just as cool to watch. Once removed from the box, his block of smart foam quickly unfolds and stretches into a perfectly useable chair.

The armchair up top was created Belgian designer Carl de Smet. The furniture is made of a smart polymer that "remembers" its shape, even after being compressed down into a tiny little box.

The technology arrives at a dynamic moment in materials design. With 3D printing becoming affordable enough to use for more than just prototypes, other designers, entrepreneurs, and researchers are either reviving older techniques that the 3D printing craze has overshadowed or introducing even newer concepts, like 4D Printing another smart materials concept rolled out at TED last month.
The trick to the polymer's shape-memory is heat, which de Smet demonstrates in the BBC video below by warming the material to 158 degrees Fahrenheit. "The material is the mechanism," he says. "Finally, the material is doing the work."—


SOURCE  Fast Company Co.Exist

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