If you’re someone who moves a lot, or just likes to change your decor, the limitations of conventional furniture can be a bit of a pain. Why not build your furniture modularly, so it can change with you?
QUIX is a modular building system designed for furnishings developed by [Robert Kern]. Giving people the ability to “build any kind of furniture in minutes with no tools,” it seems like a good gateway for people who love building with LEGO but find the pegs a little uncomfortable and expensive for full-sized chairs and couches. Anything that makes making more accessible is an exciting development in our book.
Featuring a repeating series of interlocking hooks, the panels can be produced via a number of techniques like CNC, laser cutter, or even smaller 3D printed models. Dowels and elastic bands serve as locks to prevent the furniture from tilting and since you have such a wide variety of panel materials to choose from, the color combinations can range from classic plywood to something more like a Mondrian.
If you’re looking for more modular inspiration for your house, how about gridbeam or Open Structures? If you’re wanting your furniture more musically-inclined, try Doodlestation instead.
Thanks to [DjBiohazard] for the tip!
Mostly a designers wet dream? Somehow making X that does not need Y has a lot of appeal, but it the result is not very nice/beautiful/useful. There are lots of designs that offer reconfigure ability without looking like a large Meccano set. Lundia or Pastoe from my part of the world spring to mind.
On top of that: the hook teeth are very dependent on the thickness and compressibility of the sheet material: that is two things you can be sure off to change between batches/sheets/material.
Have you ever tried to turn a Lundia or Pastoe shelf into a bed or a set of chairs? That probably won’t work! There’s a reason why QUIX might look a bit like Meccano: it gives you the flexibility to build whatever you want in minutes. In the end, it boils down to a discussion between form and function.
A uniform thickness of the boards is indeed important, but so far I have had no issues with tolerances.
I can’t think of anything nice or constructive to say.
I love this concept, but I also know I’m a ‘function over style’ personality and most people wouldn’t say those pieces are something they’d want in their house for day to day use. It is missing the ‘masking’ that modern furniture has in the form of cushions and fabric to hide the sharp/rough edges. I wonder it it would receive better feedback if there were also modular/standardized cushions with zippers to adjust to size and accept some sort of ‘fill’ (stuffing, pillows, foam, bean bag material, etc.) to cover that gap between ‘skeleton’ vs. ‘body’.
I’m also a function over style person – and I think these are more stylistic than functional. It’s the concept of modular furniture which designers love, but is never really functional – It makes a bad everything.
When did you ever decide you no longer needed your bed so you wanted to change it into a desk?! When you move you still need a bed, still need a desk, and still have the same books to fit the same bookshelves.
The reality is that good quality flat pack furniture (e.g. Ikea) can already be disassembled and packed down and moved easily, and makes much better furniture, because it’s designed to be one thing.
I’ve been seeing this stuff for decades, and the reality is the closest to actual useful modular furniture is Ikea kallax units – with the wide variety of boxes, doors, shelves etc you can swap in as your needs change.
Also designs like this tend to lack the rigidity which is required of practical furniture which lasts. I’m seeing a lot of long unsupported board edges.
And it’s hard to believe that the interlocking edges won’t wear fast, leading to to a poor fit and collapse. And they look like they’ll constantly catch at your clothing as you go past.
If you really want to do modular stuff, I think a 20-20 frame with panels attached is likely much more practical, durable, and aesthetically pleasing.
There is also the fact that for CNC work you’re likely not buying huge hardwood planks – you’re buying plywood for cutting. Plywood layers are not as strong as hardwood, of course, you could get laminated plywood or a high-quality one for strength. But if you’re spending that much money on plywood, one wonders why you have to build your own modular furniture. By that point, just build something proper that will last.
QUIX is not intended as a replacement for everyday furniture. I wouldn’t want to miss my bed either ;-)
Rather, the idea is to build “situational” furniture that you only need from time to time, e.g. event and party furniture such as bars and seating, and furniture for guests. As a maker, I like to build desks for working on temporary projects and shelves for storing work in progress. Or how about children’s furniture? Children love to rearrange their furniture for different play situations.
It may not be as comfortable as traditional furniture, but it’s still functional and better than nothing.
I love your idea of having standardized cushions and fabrics to complement the furniture. However, I wonder how you can achieve the same flexibility as with the boards. Would these cushions be specialized for a specific use, such as chairs only? And if so, what would you do with them if you turned the chairs into a shelf or a desk?
With regards to the aesthetic factors the tabs stick out enough that they could have an additional hole, notch, or attachment point for less structural elements like cushions or panels ‘finish’ them and make it less obvious that it’s lego.
This is hackaday, I’m disappointed at the commenters taking it at face value and not imagining ways to make it better!
A few of the pages on specific furniture designs show example photos with cushions added to or cloth draped over the finished piece. I think it’s just not made part of the core design because soft elements can be folded, squished, and tied into place more readily, so making them precisely standardized isn’t as much of a concern to begin with.
I like the idea of having extra holes and notches on the tabs that can be used as extension points! However, wouldn’t you be afraid that this would make the design even more restless and further reduce acceptance?
As a fat dude, I feel bad for the fat dude who visits this house and wants a place to sit.
All of that furniture looks like it would immediately sublimate upon applying load.
As a fellow fat dude, I know exactly what you mean.
QUIX is made from 12mm plywood which is one of the strongest and most durable materials used in furniture design. A chair can easily carry 300 pounds if not more.
Furniture designed to move has been around for a long time. Look up Campaign Furniture. It was rugged and looked decent.
I can appreciate how people enjoy creating systems like this, but as far as using them goes, well, I’m not the audience.
There is a lot of merit in the idea of “being your own Ikea”, that is, having a couple of formulas you can use to generate functional furniture without making a whole design project out of it.
IMO anyone with a saw and a drill should have a copy of Autoprogettazione by Enzo Mari. It’s kind of like a really good manual for the sort of thing I mean, but explained without any words.
https://www.amazon.it/Autoprogettazione-Ediz-italiana-inglese-Enzo/dp/8887942676
(I believe that version is in Italian and English, but it doesn’t matter anyway, apart from the foreword)
A nice little design language, I’ll want to keep track of this in case I run into a case where I’d like to use it. Going by the example photos, and the other comments here, I would like to point out some use cases that come to mind.
It does look a bit toy-like, so obviously presenting it to children as a general building toy comes to mind, but if it holds up well enough to be used as actual furniture then that could also be really nice as a low-stakes tinkering set that nonetheless allows the builder a taste of the sense of control over their life that building something that you put to practical use on a regular basis can give.
Speaking of imaginative play though, I’m thinking being able to take apart and reconfigure furniture really quickly seems like it’d be especially useful for improv theater? Anything you build only needs to keep existing for as long as the scene, and could be reused to build something else for the next, or even used to build something on the fly as part of an improvisation game if it can be done quickly enough.
I guess the other use would be as part of a larger setup to make a room have multiple uses but by having reconfigured to be specialized towards a specific use a different times? Like you want to switch a room between being a guest bedroom, dance hall, lounge, and dining room as needed? Similarly it could be neat for catering, for the purpose of having different types of temporary furniture depending on the event being held and the selection of furniture already provided by the host.
And of course the miniature version could be suited to mocking up scenes for various dolls, stop-motion figures, and such. Presumably this would be especially good for scaled of figure that aren’t suited to using more common construction toys for this purpose.
Also, I wonder: This is presented as being made for production with wood or printed plastic, but how well would it do as stamped sheet metal? It might introduce some other problems like greatly increased pinch hazard, but if it helps with durability that could be nice.
Thank you so much for your feedback! You perfectly describe what I had in mind when I designed QUIX: a toy-like furniture system that enables a highly flexible room concept. I really like the use cases for improvisational theatre and catering that I didn’t have on my radar yet! Also, the use of stamping sheet material is something I haven’t thought about before.