Interactive Furniture A Colorful Experience

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Ancient Japanese philosophy held that all things, whether animate or inanimate, were embodiments of the gods. So when you talked with inanimate objects such as a wall, you were actually participating in a form of soul-searching. If the wall happened to talk back, it was not unexpected.

Ichi Kanaya of Osaka University wanted to design furniture that brought this philosophy back to the people of his country. He came up with the concept of fuwapica, furniture which integrates modern technology into lifestyle experiences within the context of ancient Japanese beliefs.

Kanaya and his design team came up with four air-cushioned chairs and a circular table with built-in computer and LCD display. Table and chairs are wirelessly linked together. An object placed on the table will have its hue picked up by the table's color sensors. A signal is then relayed to the chair which turns color to match the object's hue.

Pressure sensors inside the chair control the brightness level. Higher pressure produces brighter colors. Signals sent from these sensors in the chair to the table's computer allow for adjustments in air pressure to get the right color match.

Little wonder the furniture has been called fuwapica which literally means "soft and flashy." But the emphasis is not on the technology with this furniture, it is on the pleasure people derive from interacting with it.

The chairs are also designed to respond to people sitting on them. An overweight person would trigger the pressure sensors to change the chair's color from white to red as though its blood pressure was rising.

It certainly would be one way to monitor one's weight. The chair gods must be crazy.

Kanaya expects his interactive table and chair set will be in stores, museums, bars and airports in 1-2 years.

The video above is an example of a piece of fuwa pica furniture. You can see how it reacts to pressure applied to it from the woman's hands as she touches it.