A young Dutch architect has created a floating bed which hovers above the ground through magnetic force and comes with a price tag of 1.2 million euros ($1.54 million).
Janjaap Ruijssenaars took inspiration for the bed — a sleek black platform, which took six years to develop and can double as a dining table or a plinth — from the mysterious monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 cult film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
“No matter where you live all architecture is dictated by gravity. I wondered whether you could make an object, a building or a piece of furniture where this is not the case — where another power actually dictates the image,” Ruijssenaars said.
Magnets built into the floor and into the bed itself repel each other, pushing the bed up into the air. Thin steel cables tether the bed in place.
“It is not comfortable at the moment,” admits Ruijssenaars, adding it needs cushions and bedclothes before use.
Although people with piercings should have no problem sleeping on the bed, Ruijssenaars advises them against entering the magnetic field between the bed and the floor.
They could find their piercing suddenly tugged toward one of the magnets.
Ridiculously cool. Sometimes I think that magnetism has a lot more to offer us... I can possibly see cars being powered by it sometime in the future, much in the same way as that train in Japan, which I forgot the name/location of...
Room temperature superconductors! Saw a doco somewhere on cable that showed mice being levitated magnetically, it took a lot of flux but you got floating mice. Apparently if the field is strong enough, everything is subject to a magnetic field. I would be afraid to sleep on that bed, what if I were to age really fast? Then again I'd enjoy being a cosmic embryo.
