Revolutionizing Public Spaces: Hello Wood's Smart Furniture

Unconventional Outdoor Furniture with Smart Functions

Hello Wood's innovative line of outdoor furniture, Fluid Cube and Snake, are designed to be both aesthetically pleasing and practical. The furniture is not only visually attractive but also serves as a functional installation, featuring integrated USB sockets, Wi-Fi hotspots, and lighting, all powered by shock-resistant solar panels. These pieces have been installed at four educational institutions, where they also serve as community spaces.

The Fluid Cube is a fixed unit with solar cells swimming between the layers of its glass top. The City Snake, on the other hand, is a modular structure, with elements that can be adjusted to fit the given site. This flexibility allows the furniture to be adapted to various public spaces, enhancing their usability and appeal.

The furniture is made from larch pieces cut from sawn blocks of wood using CNC technology. Despite the limits of the technology, Hello Wood successfully designed the large-scale structure to fit a regular CNC machine without producing waste. The final hollow wood beams lie on a steel structure, ensuring durability and longevity.

The design process began in January 2019, with the furniture being distributed to educational institutions in the autumn of the same year. The selection of the institutions was based on a complex system of criteria, including the characteristics of the site, the number and means of students, and the creativity of the individual bids.

The biggest challenge in designing public furniture is to create an aesthetically pleasing object that is also vandal-proof, withstands everyday use in the middle of a public space, and attracts users. That is why Hello Wood used massive, durable larch beams and planks, combining functionality and design. They also had to comply with several technical and safety standards.

The innovative design was recognized with a Platinum A' Street and City Furniture Design Award in 2020. This prestigious award recognizes world-class, exceptional, and highly innovative designs that showcase unmatched professionalism, genius, and contribute to societal wellbeing. Hello Wood's smart furniture truly embodies this spirit, pushing the boundaries of design and technology to make public spaces more engaging and functional.