Gizmodo: seating

Ballerina Sweetspot: A Chair Designed Specifically For Audiophiles

Sean Fallon — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:20:00 EST

There is just something about chairs. Just look around the office—they are not just places to sit anymore. Chairs have become super-engineered status symbols. Now audiophiles can have their own high-tech throne.

The Ballerina Sweetspot is designed to be the ultimate music lover's chair. It features a thin headrest to accommodate headphones and prevent the reflection of sound, memory foam to cushion the body, hollow armrests to neatly hold controls and an aluminum frame that supposedly reduces sonic vibration.

I highly doubt that a chair like this will enhance the listening experience enough to justify the $8000 price tag, but, again, people have a thing about chairs. And audiophiles, like CEOs, are probably willing to pay for the best of the best. [Klutz Design via AV Guide via Audio Junkies via Unplggd]

Extreme Ergonomic Seating for 'Him' and 'Her' (NSFW)

Mark Wilson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:00:00 EST

To most of us, comfort is sitting on a soft cushion.To others, comfort is sitting on a sheet of molded plastic that rides up one's butt crack.

The Chaise Him and Her chairs are the brainchild of Italian designer Fabio Novembre, intended to be an updated response to the famous Panton S chair by Verner Panton. Should you be enticed show the world a rump that you may or may not be blessed enough to possess, the chairs are available for $340 apiece. Airholes are, sadly, not an option. [Amateur DeDesign via Le Journal du Geek]

Frellstedt Light-Up Bench: Illumination For Bums

Kit Eaton — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:00:00 EDT

Kind of the inverse of the psychedelic LED effects we showed you earlier, this relaxing Light Bench is maker Frellstedt's idea of the future of seating. You know, the future where even garden furniture uses up electricity and contributes to global warming. Okay, it's stuffed with LEDs, so it only consumes 95W, but you know what I'm saying. With its shifting, selectable color patterns, it's way too nice to end up in all but the best municipal parks, where it'd just keep tramps awake in the wee small hours. Ed. note: In case you didn't get it, "bum" is a double entendre. [Trendir]

Delta "Cozy Suite" Seats Make Economy Class Semi-Tolerable

Sean Fallon — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:30:00 EDT

It may not be as fancy as first class accommodations, but Delta's new "Cozy Suite" seats promise to make economy class seating less of a hellish, crippling nightmare. The major feature of the design is a staggered layout that increases privacy while simultaneously creating a space for weary travelers to rest their heads. It also allows passengers to enjoy 31-inches of leg room (2-inches better than the competition) and the ability to recline without disturbing the person behind them.

Delta is planning on installing the Cozy Suite in its Boeing 777 and 767 economy class aircraft by 2010. Plus, the impending merger between Delta and Northwest could mean that travelers loyal to the latter company might reap the benefits of these new seats as well. Until then, you will just have to suck it up or spring for a higher class ticket. [Thompson Solutions via DVICE via Crunchgear]

Ghost in the Chair Design is Milky not Spooky

Kit Eaton — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:48:48 EDT

Designed to look like it's almost not really there, this "Ghost Chair" puts me more in mind of milk poured into water. It's pretty futuristic, in a curved-yet-straight, acrylic kind of way. It's apparently the first in a line of chairs and stools from designers Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn that will use this novel technique. We don't know if you'll be able to buy them, though they'd certainly make a dining set that would be a conversation starter. Conversations like: "These chairs look like someone's taken a glass of water and poured in ..." It's on display from the 16th to 21st April in the Salone del Mobile in Milan. [Designdrift via Yanko design]

Self-Cooling Seat Cushion, Cure for the Hot Butt

Charlie White — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:10:00 EDT

You're probably sitting in a seat right now that's getting unbearably hot, struggling with the hot butt phenomenon and wishing you had a Self-Cooling Seat Cushion like this one. It does its cooling passively without any power requirements like that cool-or-heat temperature controlled seat we showed you last year. Although this one sounds like some sort of fanny fatigue-relieving miracle, its makers claim its secret has a scientific basis, using unnamed natural mineral crystals inside with a melting point that "produces a slow, soothing cooling."

The promise of never sitting in a hot seat again is awfully tempting, but we have our doubts about this cushion, wondering how a passive cooling system like this can actually keep cooling your ass all day. Indeed, on the website it says you should stop using this cushion before all the minerals are in a melted state. It doesn't mention how long it takes for those minerals to melt.

We've sat on gel seat cushions that feel cool for just a little while until the butt warms them up. For $49.95, let's hope this miracle chemical inside performs better than a water bottle full ice cubes. [FirstStreet, via Ubergizmo]

Tennis Balls Make Ballsy Benches

Charlie White — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:30:00 EDT

Dutch designer Tejo Remy must have decided to give up tennis and sit around all day instead, so he took all the tennis balls he could find and turned them into these benches, selling the idea to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. It's a prime example of what relaxed dope laws will do for the enlightenment of a culture. Come to think of it, tennis balls are fuzzy and cushy, so if you mount them to a steel frame like Tejo did here, these might just turn out to be comfy seats. Don't try this with baseballs. [inhabitat]

Solar System Chair Has Balls

Charlie White — Tue, 15 May 2007 10:42:32 EDT

This is one weird-looking seat, called the Solar System Chair, perhaps because it lets you sit on cushy balls shaped like some of those nutty planets out there. So let's see, your ass is on Uranus while your back rests against Neptune and one arm leans on Mercury while the other is, yeah, well-grounded right here on planet Earth. Too bad they're not properly colored to resemble different planets, unless you want all of them to be models of the planet Mars.

At first we were thinking if you spend $196 on something like this, your head is in Uranus. But wait, as strange as this chair looks, if its orb-shaped cushions are bouncy enough, it might just be comfortable. We'd like to try it, because it would go perfectly with our Outer Space/Palladian Craftsman-style décor, plus we have a lot of space-cadet friends who would immediately insist on sitting in it. – Charlie White

Product Page [Solar System Chair]

In This Week's Episode of Lame Airplane Seat Innovations...

Travis Hudson — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:30:47 EDT

...we find our heroes cramped in their seats even more thanks to this extremely awkward "Freedom" concept. The so-called freedom concept would allow planes to add another row of seats thanks to reversed seating arrangements. The reversed seats would reduce needed width by overlapping shoulders. The only way I would consider something like this is if the price of the ticket were, say, half of what it would normally go for with regular seating. I can't wait for the day that airplanes eliminate seating altogether and just do standing room, you know, like the subway. –Travis Hudson

Airplanes to become even more uncomfortably close [Gearfuse]

Standing Tomb Only, by Airbus

Charlie White — Wed, 03 May 2006 09:39:27 EDT

Airbus hotly denies its alleged bright idea of creating coffin-sized "standing tomb only" padded backboards created especially to cram more sardines into their flying tin cans, contradicting a New York Times article by Christopher Elliott that described the strap-on standing seats in an article last week. But Elliott cries foul in his blog, refusing to back down even though his newspaper printed a mild, sorta/kinda retraction. The Times reporter even produced an illustration of the "seats" for all to see. Said he in his blog:

I didn't invent standing airline seats, but some believe that I have. Maybe the only way to clear this up is to post a picture of the seat that someone recently sent to me.

Who knows where this little .gif file came from, but who are we going to believe? A New York Times reporter, or an embarrassed French airline maker in cahoots with greedy, money-losing and passenger-hating airlines around the world?

Taking a stand [ellipses, via The Consumerist]