Hasta La Ideas

Häfele is a German manufacturer of furniture fittings and architectural hardware, and of all the booths we saw at Holz-Handwerk, theirs was the most mobbed. And it’s no wonder why: Aimed at the designers and builders responsible for kitting out homes and offices, their sprawling exhibit was a showcase of what it’s possible to make with their products, a sort of vision of our domestic future—and one that’s attainable right now, as all of the hardware exists.

In Häfele’s vision, storage furniture is not a boring bunch of static objects; rather, everything transforms to serve us in kinetically exciting ways, shifting, flipping and sliding at the touch of a finger, either via tiny hidden motors or cleverly designed and invisible mechanical fixtures. We snuck in early one morning before the crowds got there to show you:

Spotted at Holz-Handwerk.

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