Innovation of the week: A self-assembling table

"Good news for lazy people," said Liz Stinson at Wired. "We're one step closer to buying furniture that will assemble itself." A team of researchers at MIT's Self-Assembly Lab partnered with Italian design studio Mamma Fotogramma to create the Programmable Table, "which transitions from flat to fully built with a gentle tug." The key is Wood-Skin, a technology that mills "complex tessellated geometries" into wood, allowing it to "fold into shape like origami."

An elastic textile between each wood layer acts as a sort of skeleton that's "pre-programmed to pull the wood" into shape once it's out of the box. The table is not on the market yet, but the designers have plans to adapt the technology for chairs, shelves, and bigger tables, making furniture assembly as simple as opening a box.

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