In Back to the Future II, there were these great floating skateboards. I think that I’ve wanted one ever since I saw the movie, and now it looks like they’re getting closer to a real thing.

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Naturally, it’s the Japanese who have come up with this ingenious floating chair to ferry around the elderly. It was developed by researchers at Kobe Gakiun University. The chair has a bunch of air jets that allow it to float, kind of like how an air hockey table works.

For now, the levitating chair is just a prototype, but I’m sure that the researchers will come up with loads of applications for this personal hovercraft.

[Robot.M via Crave]

Just add “-up” to “Blow” and you’ll get the idea.

Measuring 71″ x 35″ when fully inflated, the Blow Sofa is made of a couple of dunnage bags, which are made from scrap wood and are traditionally used as cushions or airbags for cargo. A couple of rubber straps tied to what seems to be an easy to assemble metal rack hold the bags together.

I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to fill up the bags on my own, but it’s nothing that a small air pump can handle. I could see myself buying one of these, as long as designer Malafor changes the sofa’s name.

[via freshome]

That’s right; van der Poll draws a very thin line between customization and destruction. Here’s the designer himself “customizing” a Do hit chair:

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I hate to be a downer here, but even though whaling on your furniture seems like a fun activity, I don’t think you’ll ever make a comfortable chair out of it. Not that that’s the point of the whole thing. Eh, at least you get a free sledgehammer out of the deal. Contact sales@droog.com to request the price of the Do hit chair.

[via uncrate]

…or a whole group. In fact the flexiblelove 8, as its name implies, can fit up to 8 people, while the flexiblelove 16 can accommodate up to 16 people! A 20-seater will be released next year. Then next next year they’ll release the flexblelove moviehouse, a 300-seater, then next next next year the flexiblelove stadia, a 22,000-seater. The previous sentence is of course filled with lies.

Don’t believe it? Watch this:

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Flexiblelove’s honeycomb design is the key to its stretching and bending abilities.

Since it’s made out of cardboard, not even the unique design can prevent it from turning into Soggylove if it gets wet.

If you live in Taiwan, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain or Portugal, you can purchase the Flexiblelove 16 and Flexiblelove 8 online; just hit up the respective websites listed here. The smaller, 8-seater Flexiblelove 8 sells for £220 (appx. $350 USD) while Flexiblelove 16 sells for £390 ($620 USD) at the Flexiblelove UK online store. If you’re not in any of the places listed above, send a message to intl@flexiblelove.com for help on purchasing.

I think it looks neat and all, but I don’t think I would ever drop $350 for a cardboard chair.

[via Neatorama]

Created by UK designers Aether & Hemera, the Mood Chair is like a Mood Ring for your ass. The chair is designed to change colors based on the user’s mood as well as the environment around them. Now how this hocus-pocus works, I dunno. A&H say it’s something to do with “LEDs, embedded micro-chips, and appropriate sensors”. Natch.

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No word on if or when you’ll be able to buy a Mood Chair for your own living room, but I’ll be the first to let you know when you can. While you wait, I’m gonna get to work on my Pet Rock chair.

[via Generate Pipeline]

Acousticom’s Sound Egg is an acoustically-insulated pod, loaded up with a 5.1 surround sound system. In addition to the 5 precisely positioned satellite speakers, there’s also a hefty 10-inch subwoofer right under your seat. Talk about some serious rump-shaking. The guys at Acousticom claim the speaker system offers solid frequency response all the way from 20Hz up to 20KHz. As you can see from the photo below, you’ll still need to B.Y.O. home theater system and amp, but the chair has all of the speakers built-in.

Originally created for audio testing and home theater demonstrations, the Sound Egg is designed to provide a completely enveloping audio experience, that’ll have you never wanting to head out to the theater again. At least not when you’re by yourself, since there’s not really a good way to have multiple people share in the Sound Egg experience at the same time.

Ready to sit inside a giant egg and chill out to the latest blockbuster movies and video games? Don’t care for red and grey. No worries – the Sound Egg’s outer shell is available in 7 different colors, and you have 11 choices for the sound-deadening foam lining (a few colors cost $25 bucks extra). You can sit your butt in your very own Sound Egg for $1450 (USD) over at Acousticom’s online store.

The guys over at Motoart took this seat from an authentic Vietnam-era F-4 fighter jet, and turned it into a cushy, padded desk chair. The seat has been upgraded with a sturdy aluminum base, durable double-wheel casters and upholstered with clean new fabric. Plus, those armrest look like they could be a little uncomfortable.

Are you a bomber, not a fighter? Do you just need a little extra upper-back support? Then you might like this disproportionately tall B-52 ejector seat instead:

Of course, the big flaw in the design of these things is the fact that they’re meant to be desk chairs. Really, why would you need to eject yourself from your own workspace? I’d much rather have a pair of visitors’ chairs that I could use to eject annoying co-workers from my office. I could use that today – and yesterday – and tomorrow.

To check out the complete collection of these airplane office seating and other cool furniture crafted from antique aviation parts, fly on over to Motoart.

[via MadeMan]

Mr. Smiling Caucasian must be listening to some R. Kelly. Feelin’ on yo booty. Yeah, that’ll massage him all right. All night. Anyway the MUR-01 has an analog input, analog output as well as a headphone output.

The speakers on either side of the chair have an output of 2-watts each; the 4.5-watt subwoofer and amplifier are mounted inside. The system plugs in to an AC power supply for power. TheMUR-01 will be available in Japan by mid-July for ¥19,800 ($207 USD). It also comes in black. Smiling Caucasian not included.

[AVWatch via Fareastgizmos]

This life-size replica is a dead-ringer for Captain Kirk’s original swivel-throne from the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Not only does the chair look like the original Cap’ns seat from a distance, it’s even got all of the original controls in the arms.

Measuring  in at 41″(h) x 42″(w) x 39″(d), the 215- pound chair is a perfect reproduction of the seat that Shat sat on for all 3 years of his 5 year mission. Made from wood, leather and various plastic bits, this substantial throne is the perfect place for you to bark out orders to your own crew. (Or to issue a Red Alert to Comcast customer service when your cable cuts out.)

Captain Kirk’s chair is available in a limited edition of only 1701 pieces (get it?) over at Entertainment Earth for a whopping $2200 (USD). I wonder how much that is in Federation Credits? And if you really can’t get enough Trek, you could always cut a hole in the seat and put one in your bathroom over the toilet seat.

[via Inventor Spot]

Called “Text-ile”, the armchair was made by designers Dante Bonuccelli and Lamm for the 2009 UMUL (Use More, Use Less) project, a workshop dedicated to incorporating recycling in design.

The chair is made of 40 computer keyboards that were obtained from a company that makes laptops for blind people. I’m starting to think that this one’s no good as well; the keys would make too much noise. Do you think a trackball chair would be better? Perhaps an LCD screen chair?

[via MoCo Loco via walyou]

Perfect for lighting up your drab living space, these Léon and Max chairs from French designer Philippe Boulet light up using color-changing RGB LEDs inside the seats, backs, and armrests. And best of all, they’re not tacky in the least.

Hoverit claims that being on a Lounger feels “like floating on a cloud”. How’d they know how that feels like? Anyway as you can see the Lounger consists of 2-pieces, the lounger itself and a base. Obviously, the base contains magnets which repel those located underneath the lounger. Remember Professor Xavier’s Anti-Magneto plastic wheelchair in the X-Men movie? The Lounger is also made of plastic, specifically acrylic, chosen by Hoverit because they want customers to “see every component”. I normally wouldn’t want to see a chair’s innards, but if I had a Lounger, I’ll be staring at it the whole day.

Each Lounger is hand-made in Britain. The Lounger is easy to move because of the built-in caster wheels. It also comes in different colors and in different chair designs. By chair design Hoverit means “the holes at the backrest and on the seat”; customers can choose from slots, circular holes, droplets, or hearts. Hoverit, kindly remove that last chair design.

The Lounger sells for a whopping £7, 500 ($10,509 USD); final price may be higher depending on chosen color scheme and design. While it isn’t widely available yet, you can already order the Lounger directly from Hoverit. Each Lounger comes with a limited edition certificate and serial number, user guide, safety notice, comfort cushion and outdoor cover. The Lounger is delivered already assembled, because there are only four people who can put this thing together: Magneto, Polaris, and this Taiwanese man and his son.

If you can afford the Lounger, I suggest you order it now because the company is offering the Lounger at a discounted price of £5,875 ($8, 232 USD), plus they’ll throw in an anti-scratch mat worth £225 ($315 USD). Hoverit says that the Lounger is but the first of a whole line of hover furniture. Hoture. Furniver.

[via Neatorama]

That one costs €7,900 ($10,554). While all Sonic Chairs have input jacks, for €7,880 ($10,527) you can also have one with a built-in iPod charging station, like the one below.

And the one below is what Sonic Chair whips out if a customer’s thinking, “Meh. Not crazy enough.”

Yep, that’s a 20″ iMac. What’s really absolutely amazingly surprising about it is that for €10,450 ($13,960), it only comes with 1 GB of RAM. Also Sonic Chair claims that it’s touchscreen.

The fact that it only has 1 GB of RAM really struck me. More than anything else.

[sonic chair via chipchick]

The shape of the chair is definitely weird; even Varier says it’s weird. And we all know that weirdly shaped furniture = expensive furniture. Not one to rebel,the Gravity Balans sells for $1,200. Clearly only handsome painters with level 2 stubble who love to nap after painting will be able to afford this.

Each of the 250 Gravity Balans recliners will be signed and numbered by its designer, Peter Opsvik. Buyers can customize their purchase with various colors and accents, and can even choose to have a “kid-friendly” version. I assume that the kid-friendly version can be used to go sledding. While experiencing zero gravity.

[via Asylum]

To make his Sound/Chair, designer Matthew Plummer-Fernandez started with a 3D plot based on the volume, time and frequency of a short piece of audio.

He then fed the data into a computer-controlled water-jet cutter, which carves the body of each individual chair from a block of Polyethelene foam (the original prototype was hand-cut by the designer himself).

In the process of coming up with the right audio recipe for his Sound/Chair, Plummer-Fernandez experimented with 719 unique sounds before he found the one that was just right for a comfy chair, with proper arm-rests. (It also looks like it might give you an unintentional back and butt massage from the look of all those nubby surfaces).

The Sound/Chair is available now from upscale UK retailer Selfridges in limited quantities for the low, low price of £3950 (appx. $7015 USD).

[via CoolHunting and MocoLoco]

Nope, there’s nothing even remotely reminiscent of Pac-Man going on in QAYOT’s Pouf-Man designer seating collection. It’s just a strange coincidence that it has a similar name, that’s all.

I mean really, Pac-Man gobbled power pills and munched on ROUND dots. Nowhere in the original game do I remember any power squares or chewy cubes, do you? And Pac-Man was yellow, not black, white, brown or red, no?

As long as you’re not with the Namco legal division, head on over to the QAYOT website and check out the entire collection.

[Hometone via CribCandy via Inspire me, now!]

RoboStool has three modes- universal remote, beacon navigation, and thermal sensor following. This video demonstrates the beacon navigation. It looks a little scary when the footstool springs into action, but then again, robots springing into action are always inherently a little scary, no?

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To explain how he turned this cheap vinyl footstool into this robotic wonder, the creator says, “As with all my current robot projects I’m using the Parallax Propeller Chip on a Proto Board. For the drive I’m using the new Parallax Motor Mount Kit and two HB-25 motor controllers. A third HB-25 is used to control the two ServoCity linear actuators which are used to raise and lower the body and lid.” (Hopefully you understood some of those words because I’m not sure I did.)

This is the latest project from Norris Labs. You can get the schematics to build your very own RoboStool, and learn about previous projects, right here.

[via Make:]

The video is fun to watch as you get to see the chair in action, following this guy around the library. Somehow the chair is cute enough that it doesn’t seem too creepy that it’s always right behind you.

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Dutch designer Jelte van Geest created the chairs for Openbare Bibliotheek Endhoven, a library design project. He says. “Robots are often seen as mean machines. However, they do have a more friendly side, which should have a more prominent place in our society.” Whoa, there, Jelte- just don’t get too comfortable with them- or that whole robot overlord thing could happen right under our noses.

This is great for someone like me, because I’m lazy. Then again, I never go to the library so I guess I’d need a home version. Another application would be in a bar, so that when you get up to grab a new drink some jerk doesn’t steal your seat.

Now all it needs to achieve perfection is a cupholder.

[via momeld]

For some reason, I’m guessing it’s not the world’s most comfortable chair, but it sure beats sitting on a bunch of 8-track tapes.

I’m really not sure why he named his creation the “Panda Chair”, since all I see are CDs and a metal frame — no pandas anywhere in sight. Maybe it’s the same reason that Chinese mall food joint is called Panda Express. Every time I try to order the Kung Pao Panda, they look at me like I have three heads.

[via designboom]

Homer lounges lazily in his easy chair while providing a source of supplemental light on your work surface. The lampshade is adjustable and has 4 LEDs to provide just a little bit of accent light. Just plug it in to a spare USB port on your computer and you’re set.

If you’re a big Homer fan, you can pick one up for $19.99 from perpetual kid.