Magnets! How do they work? Don't answer that. Like Shaggy 2 Dope, I don't want to talk to a scientist. We all know they're magic.
So I'm just going to say it. This line of flatpack end tables by Chicago-based furniture design house Dock 312 is straight up magical. They ship flat, but when you take them out of the box, the pieces join together magnetically, making construction virtually idiot proof. No need to worry about nuts and bolts and allen wrenches.
That seems like a recipe for disaster, but it's really not. The system is like MagSafe for flatpack furniture. The legs of the tables slot together, guided into their respective joints and held firmly in place by magnets embedded in the wood.
Called the Artesian line, there are 12 tables in all, each with a circular or rectangular glass top sitting atop four magnetically joined legs of varying design configurations. Each piece is made of bamboo plywood, and costs $485 when bought directly from the Dock 312 website
As Core77 notes, this isn't the first magnetically joined furniture out there, but other, similar projects never got past the concept stage, like this Dutch line of magnetic furniture. Dock 312 might be the first furniture design studio to actually start shipping magnetically jointed flatpack furniture.
[via Core77]