In theory, flat-pack furniture you can assemble with just a single Allen wrench is a brilliant idea. It makes furniture easier to transport, cuts down the cost, and doesn’t require any additional tools to put together.
In practice, however, flat-pack furniture is a nightmare. Simple stuff like tables and chairs are easy enough, but anybody who’s ever tried to assemble a Borgsjö cabinet with Ikea’s impossibly vague directions knows firsthand how frustrating it can be. There’s a reason MIT grad students are building autonomous robots to do this stuff for us – it’s tedious, and nobody enjoys doing it.
But don’t worry – even if the Utopian future isn’t filled with robotic furniture builders, there’s still hope that humanity may one day break free from the oppressive Allen wrench regime, thanks to this line of uber-simple magnetic furnishings.
Conceived and built by German designer Benjamin Vermeulen, the MAG collection (short for Magnetic Assisted Geometry) includes a desk, chair, and set of stackable modular cabinets, all of which are assembled and held together with magnets.
These aren’t your average magnets though. Lets be real here – this furniture is designed for those of us (myself included) who are too lazy to use an Allen wrench – let alone go for a jog every day – so Vermeulen designed them with rare-earth magnets strong enough to hold up even the most hefty of humans.
Thanks to this clever construction, each piece can easily be assembled and disassembled many times over without losing its initial structural integrity, thus making it a breeze to take take them apart when you need to move, store, or sell them on Craigslist. Check out the video below to see just how simple it is.
At this point in time it’s unclear whether or not the MAG line will ever go into large-scale production, so unfortunately all we can do right now is keep our fingers crossed and hope Ikea takes note. Find out more here.
