Feeling The Heat? This Slick Table Supercharges Your A/C

As the weather heats up, certain furniture falls out of favor: leather couches, polyester seats, steel patio chairs left out too long in the sun. But what if your furniture could keep you cool in the summer? That's the killer app of the ZEF Climatic Table, which can help supercharge your A/C in the summer and lower your heating bill in the winter.

Crafted out of oak and aluminum, the ZEF Climatic Table doesn't generate heat or cold itself. It soaks it up like a thermal sponge. Think of it as a designer thermos in disguise. Impregnated with a phase-changing wax, the ZEF Climactic Table can store heat or cold, then release it when the temperature changes by conducting it through the table's wavy shell.

The result is that the ZEF Climactic Table can lower the energy costs of any room it's in. And those savings stack up. The designers claim that the ZEF Climactic Table can reduce air-conditioning costs by 30%, and heating costs by a whopping 60%.

The ZEF Climactic Table is the first product from French architect and engineer Raphaël Ménard and designer Jean-Sébastien Lagrange. The duo intend it to be the first of many objects in their Zero Energy Furniture initiative, an attempt to solve problems around energy usage at the furniture scale, rather than the building scale.

Sadly, as I write this on a sticky summer day, the ZEF Climactic Table is not yet available for sale. It was a one-off project. Which is too bad, since all I can think about is how nice it would be to lie on top of one of these right about now.

You can read more about Zero Energy Furniture here.

[via PSFK]

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