A convertible dog bed and cat tower laptop table feature among the 11 designs in the Multifunctional Pet Furniture for Small Space Living project, which aims to make both pets and people happy in compact apartments.
Organised by Colin Chee, creative director of the YouTube channel Never Too Small, the Multifunctional Pet Furniture prototypes were showcased during Melbourne Design Week 2024.
Chee challenged a selection of international designers to consider how pet houses might be better designed for small apartments, and particularly if they could be made to last longer and serve multiple functions.
Matt Reynolds' Kitty Kabin, a laptop table and cat tower, is one of the designs in the Multifunctional Pet Furniture for Small Space Living project The 11 designers also had to meet one additional requirement: each piece had to be based on a single sheet of plywood, with the idea that the plans could be open-sourced and the objects replicated by pet owners anywhere in the world.
Chee first had the idea for the Multifunctional Pet Furniture project a couple of years ago, after noticing nearly new items of pet furniture frequently being thrown out in his apartment building's hard rubbish collection area.
At the same time, he struggled to find a pet house that would suit his own compact space.
The problem, he felt, was that these items were bulky and inflexible, so once the animal no longer had use of it ? or if they never took to it ? there were few options for the storage-limited...