Rock Yourself Some Light – The Murakami Rocking Chair

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I am 31 – but I love rocking chairs.  That’s not to insinuate that only old people rock, don’t get me wrong.  When I was a kid, my parents had one of those old, heavy, thick rocking chairs that you could literally rock yourself to sleep in, and the slight reclining shape of the chair makes life that much more sweet.  Rochus Jacob has produced a design for a rocking chair that not only lets you rock comfortably, but also allows you generate energy with your rocking motion that is then released via the integrated lighting fixture above the chair.  It’s called the Murakami Rocking Chair.

The light fixture mounted on the chair is a reading lamp of sorts, made out of an OLED source.  The dynamic energy generation technology is built into the skids of the chair, along with a battery pack that collects the energy when you’re rocking in the daylight.

Sweet.

The designer recently had this to say about the design:

I was looking for opportunities to generate energy through activities we naturally do. The final result is a rocking chair that enables the user to experience production and consumption of electricity in a gentle and rewarding way. An abstract process becomes tangible and eventually cultivates natural awareness. Complexity is covered by simplicity. Advanced nano-dynamo technology which is built in to the skids of the chair and more efficient light sources such as the newly developed OLED generation makes it possible to build a rocking chair with a reading lamp running on electricity generated from the rocking motion. During daylight the energy gets stored in a battery pack. The construction of the flat and bendable organic light emitting diodes allows new form factors such as using the traditional shape of a lamp but instead of having a light bulb the lampshade himself turns out to be the light source. To have a drastic reduction of consumption the big challenge will be to make consuming less feel like getting more.

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Thanks to HomeTone, Designboom, and No. 18htn!

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