When Ikea rolled out their line of wireless charging furniture and objects, it essentially established that the technology is now mainstream. But as revolutionary as these affordable objects are, they still need to be plugged into the wall, drawing their power from the mains.

Interior designer Vihanga Gore and interaction designer Sergey Komardenkov, both students at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, think Ikea can do better. Their Heat Harvest concept, developed as part of the same Space10 workshop as the art-as-indicator project, aims to use thermoelectricity to generate the juice, by absorbing the heat given off by warmer objects.

"We imagine two possible products that use the technology", says Vihanga. "The first is table tops that extract heat from hot objects that are placed on top of them. These could be anything from a pot of soup to a frying pan straight from the kitchen stove. The second product is heat harvesting pads that you could place beneath TV set top boxes or heat-emitting power adapters anywhere in the home."

Here's what they envision:

Should the technology prove workable--the project page claims that "Recent developments in nanotechnology have…made the conversion of heat to electricity more efficient than ever"—it's not difficult to imagine Ikea starting out with something as simple as a Heat Harvest under-laptop pad. It'd be nice if, when my machine is burning up running Adobe Premiere, it was charging my phone at the same time.

Just a reminder that for those of you that would like to participate in a workshop, or even suggest one of your own, Space10 is actively seeking submissions and participants. You can learn more, sign up and submit here.