In contrast to conventional furniture which falls towards the earth, Floating Bed falls towards the sky.
The goal in this project was to make a usable artefact of respectable size that doesn’t have gravity but another force as it’s image dictating starting point, namely magnetism.
The shown object here can be seen as the captured form used by Stanley Kubrick in the 1968 movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.
The monolith, as Stanley Kubrick and science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke suggest, must have been made by other powers than those responsable for the usually circular planetary bodies and other more liberal forms, such as organisms. The rectangle as a metaphor for the existence of intelligent life.
The object is held up 40 cm by a permanent magnetic force due to the use of neodymium (NdFeB) elements in the floor as well as in the object. Thin steel cables assure it’s position and the smart use of steel plates and air make the object userfriendly by strongly decreasing the magnetic force where it’s not necessary. Different possible uses such as a bed, sofa, Japanese dining table, display for objects or as base for a floating pavilion can be thought of since the artefact can carry a load of 900 kg.
The shown scale model is at scale 1:5 and also for sale.The concept with all possible functions, products and images are registered and protected by it´s designer Janjaap Ruijssenaars.