house: electronics-aware furniture

Home furniture is unfriendly to the small electronic devices (cellphone, digital camera, iPod, PDA) in our lives. It doesn't provide useful storage for the tiny parts, it doesn't deal with the ^%$#@! wall-wart power supplies, and it doesn't do cable management for DC/Ethernet/USB. I've rejected conventional Ethan Allan or IKEA-style furniture and keep more and more stuff on a kick-ass SOHO desk (both the legendary Herman Miller Levity and a Biomorph — I'll post more on these some day) with their fiddly bits in office metal-drawer cabinets; this works but your home becomes an office.

The Wiretracks iCove in-wall picture frame is an interesting idea to move stuff into the wall (see my and other comments on Gizmodo), and the Rotalia Multipot electronics "vase" tries to make a functionally beautiful storage object, but neither is quite right. The surface where you place these gizmos, whether it's your bedside table, kitchen table, or hallway stand, has to become an ultra-functional mini desk.

Categories: house, electronics, furniture, PDA, design