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"Building an Invisible PC"

Revisiting the question: Should computers be designed as furniture?

By Rain Noe - September 1, 2020

in Object Culture | Furniture Design

Here's a question every industrial design professor ought raise with their students: To what extent should objects be visible or invisible? While furniture, hair dryers and circular saws obviously fall in the former category, what about computers, which most of us use for work, but which can be interfaced via smaller objects like keyboards and mice? Shouldn't the computer itself just disappear? Do consumers enjoy having a whirring plastic or metal box atop or beneath their desk?

YouTuber Matt Perks has tackled this question before, as seen in "Should Computers be Designed as Pieces of Furniture?", but here he takes things one step further. Perks reasoned that a standard 2"-thick desktop surface ought have enough room to store every component required to run a PC, and that furthermore this design could be sustainable, with individual components easily located and replaced as necessary. He also figured he could make the desk look good, providing no visual clues that it contained technology.

This is a long build, but was a fun one to watch--because this is exactly the type of prototyping process an industrial designer might be tasked with at a consultancy, if posed the computer-as-furniture question by a client. Perks has to think through and solve the problems of structural integrity, durability, functionality, future-proofing, ergonomics, aesthetic customizability, noise considerations, and the very tricky problem of how to handle the cooling (which he handled in a particularly brilliant, if pricey way).

I'd say it's well worth the watch:

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Mark Hollister

4 years ago

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Depends on the user. I want my computers to be visible and eye catching since I'm an enthusiast and I even rotate the computer so the back faces me so I have easy access to all the cables. For me, invisble design is a no-go because I'm not the type of user that wants to ignore the tech but instead fully embrace it.

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Richard Kuchinsky

4 years ago

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All that and end result still looks worse than an iMac and takes up the same or more space, plus you get a small, basic, ugly desk. Why?

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- Anthony Towers
  
  Richard Kuchinsky
  
  4 years ago
  
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  hmmmm, a nice warm desk.
  shame he didn't also attempt to hide the power cable in the legs
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Ez Y

4 years ago

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Or you can buy a PC that is integrated in the Monitor stand:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14764/dells-optiplex-7070-ultra-a-compute-module-for-aio-pcs

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Ray Jepson

4 years ago

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Nicely done, except the cooling could be optimized. The NUC is already close to this concept, it could be tucked underneath a desk. It would be interesting if a manufacturer made a laptop without a screen, kind of a pancake computer, that was intended to be mounted under or in a desk.

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