What is the Future of Furniture over the next 25 years?
I'm interested in the future of furniture from all aspects: design, manufacture, sales, marketing, sustainability etc.
Answers (18)
Michael, quite frankly I don't know. Yet I find this an interesting question as it will influence quite many things (). Of course it depends a lot of available househould income, geographic / climate area, lifestyle, style awareness etc. Here is my 2 cent thought to inspire others:
- cheaper, more compact, lighter, new material (more textiles, bamboo, composite, recycled material), new fixtures (click-in instead of screws), new colours (like the ones used in paint brushing), self finish, exchangeable elements, individualised body fit, wearable furniture (a wild thought)
- more frequent change, recyclical material
- made in China, made by Ikea
Doug H.
Charter School Finance Expert
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In the U.S., I imagine that traditional quality wood furniture will still be popular. However, I imagine that more and more "green" efforts will be made in construction and perhaps even the primary materials. I have no clue what that means in terms of design as even now, it seems to me that design taste is all over the map.
Dr. Taseer R.
Business Strategy, Marketing & Sales, Managed Services and ICT ITES Operations <Strategic Consultant & Motivator>
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China will dominantly create the splendid future of furniture industry. The business will see continous improvement from a logistics and sourcing standpoint.
Prime Resource's hide-away Plasma/LCD Lifts, Ergonomic Chairs, Office Seatings, Workstations, Telestations, Café Seating, Filing, Storage, Boardroom, Breakout, and more will all see a facelift.
Certainly we'll see a continued rise in distributed manufacture (independent designers, home assembly, etc) - Ponoko.com is a good example. If 'green' does take on, or prices demand it, homes will get smaller, and there would be an increased demand for multi-functional pieces.
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Steven B.
Senior Financial and Business Professional, Board Member & Devoted Father
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Oh sure is! Innovation doesn't stop!!
Great answer by Pauline Ores. The site pokono.com is a real find. I'll have to find a way to feature their search strategy on SearchEngineWatch.com.
More people deserve to find them.
Living in New York, I find innovative design, sustainability, and functionality (solutions for small places) are the best solutions.
When I lived in North Carolina, back in the late 80s, just-in-time manufacturing was all the rage. There were proposals in the state for airport hubs (think FedEx) near High Point and other manufacturing areas (RTP) that promised to offer dramatic improvements in supply chain management. Software as a service kept its part of the bargain in the virtual world; in the real world, those JIT hubs were never built.
The other marketing area to explore: Google's new Audio/Print/TV targeting options, which would make craftsmanship a viable alternative to manufacturing furniture on a massive scale - providing Google achieves critical mass. (link below)
That might create a niche "Made In America" market to compete with outsourced manufacturing.
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Based on R&D and Capabilities today we can expect to see:
Furniture with embedded low cost OLED's
Furniture that can harvest its own energy from the environment.
Furniture that repells dust and other dynamic (changing) surface capabilities.
Self-repairing furniture (cracks) or shape-shifting furniture (.....down the road)
Connected (Networked) Furniture
etc
Walter Derzko
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Terri L M.
Business Strategies Consultant putting small businesses on track for success; speaker, trainer, author.
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Michael:
Traditionals and Baby Boomers wanted durable, long lasting furniture for their homes. Gen X does not have much of a 'long term' focus for much of anything, same for Millenials. They are more interested in something with lower quality at cheaper cost that can be replaced in five or six years with 'the next best thing'. Sustainability issues are moving forward now faster than in the past ten years. There was a lot of mumblinb about 'green' design, but not much happening. The 'rock' has been pushed up to the top of the hill and is rolling down the other side, picking up considerable speed.
Design for Millenials will focus on 'hand-made' and 'home made'...this is a group that has never had to make anything with their own hands and will be fascinated by those who can or do. One-of-a-kind or handcrafted furnishings will be of great interest to them.
So long as there are cheaper materials and labor around the globe, imports will continue to rise. But, as with anything else, as pay scales rise in emerging nations, higher skill levels are demanded, and cost of living moves upward, the cost differential will likely even out somewhat between US products and those imported.
Mike,
I agree with all below answers which mostly were about the future impacts of manufacturing & new material technologies; just I emphasis on demographical and cultural aspect. In some places like Europe that societies are againg, traditional wooden furniture will be more popular for middle class and wealthy families and modern stylish & multifunctional furnitures will be popular for younger couples that they have small houses.
Size of furnitures and space that they occupy in the house will be important as well as higher ratio of quality/price.
For some other places like developing countries which they have bigger families, the quality (longer life) will be more important.
Also, marketing will be mostly in cyber space and they will high light more common concern of societies, like sustainability of furnitures.
Best, Aziz
Eileen B.
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Hello Michael,
Let's see, by then, the style and fashion will most likely look just as it does today if we follow our present trend.
Eileen
Hi Michael,
Within the UCIM (User-Centred Innovation for Manufacturing) project (http://www.sustainable-everyday.net/UCIM/) one of the roadmap directly focuses the furniture industry (http://sustainable-everyday.net/UCIM/?cat=3). IPTS was partner of the project but I did not contribute.
Best regards, Olivier
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Adam K.
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Rising fuel costs will change the global market in the next 5 to 10 years. Falling dollar will insure that cheap China goods go to other (Euro) based markets = furniture shipped to US not so cheap anymore. I would expect low-end manufactures to move to Mexico or Central America, or maybe even Canada. The rest of us will just have to pay more for those designer Italian chairs (made in Italy).
Ray M.
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I think there will be two extremes in the market that are deepening today.
Mass produced low cost, simple design, sustainable, replaceable....
AND
One of hand crafted works of art. More and more attention is being paid to honor well made hand crafted items.
Furniture will be more flexible (in construction, re useable, destionations etc.) and we will have less furniture. The ambient aspect will be more important than today. A furniture will be used in multi circumstances.Ex. a screen will be a touch screen, a projection of .., a painting, a hologram saying hallo when you come in.
Kaat
see note to you
To see the future of furniture and lifestyle I would look at its past and what society required from its performance as time passed. Generally, after wars furniture has to give a feeling of robustness and presence, it has to perform and be simple, as countries get richer there is also ability of dedicating more space to decoration, see the Great Exhibition of 1851 as an example, where decoration was brought to its excess to demonstrate richness and luxury, but also bad taste in certain instances.
As an opposition to so much useless decoration, a movement called Bauhaus opened minds on simplicity and geometry seen as the new esthetics, yet also function. That's where we get all that postmodern furniture from (inspiration-wise) such as Mendini's or Sottsass's works of the 1980's.
Minimalism establishes itself in the 90's to counterbalance the explosion of colours in furniture and clothing of the 80's. We see geometries, blacks and whites both in dresses and interiors of the times. (claudio silvestrin was an architect pioneer of minimalism)
So.. to come to today.. where are we at? I would call this the era of virtuality (isn't this linkedin, facebook, secondlife and so on our new way of communication?) so this is our new society, based on immateriality, and based on services more than on objects. And this is how I see the furniture of the future, more flexible and personalizable, and less "touchable". We will sell the space we inhabit as a furniture element.
Design: more virtual, fluid, transversal, exploration of new uses for new objects, design for new individuals of this society: people who move, do not have a fixed home, CITIZENS OF THE WORLD
Manufacture: China yes, but as it happens with regional districts of production in italy, we will have global districts where each country and-or city specializes on one thing (london in specific, for eg. is strong in services, italy in production, china too, germany and japan in technology and so on)
Sales: virtual, internet: ebay, amazon etc. destruction of physiscal "places" and creation of cyber sale realities (as in dior presenting collections in Second Life)
Marketing: different channels of communication, based on new paths of people and users - see little adverts inbetween our messages on facebook for eg.
Sustainability: radical modification of everyday habits, done also through design of products, to construct a more efficient and green society.. as society changes, products become automatically more sustainable....if virtuality makes products disappear to be slowly replaced by services, won't production sustainability no longer be an issue?
