Japan's Oki has developed an office chair that, it claims, can jump. And we thought all they were good for is spinning around and skating along on the casters.

Oki's chair, curiously codenamed 'Leopard', employs what the company's boffins call a "robot leg", with the bit for your bum equivalent to the thigh. The calf, ankle and foot form the stand on which the seat rests.

Oki's 'Leopard': the leaping chair

Oki's pitch is that the design makes the contraption actively help you stand up and makes sitting down more comfortable too. Empty, the chair's seat is angled upward so you don't have to bend down as far as you would with a standard chair. As you descend, the seat and back move in harmony with your own seat and back. More...

Green may be the colour of money, but furniture retailers looking for ways to boost sales this October should think pink. October is officially Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and that means pink is going to be everywhere: on cereal boxes, handbags and yogurt containers, not to mention on politicians’ lapels.

Since most furniture consumers are women, it makes sense that furniture stores would want to show their support for the fight against breast cancer, too.
Design Within Reach, a chain of 65 furniture stores in the United States and Canada, is stepping up its efforts this year in the hopes of raising about $90,000 for Susan G. Komen for the Cure -- three times what the company raised in 2007.

To reach its goal, Design Within Reach asked a group of manufacturers to design five pink chairs that would be auctioned online, with the proceeds going entirely to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
The results were a white, powdercoat rocking chair with a pink seat from Emeco; a curvy, round chair upholstered in pink wool from Fritz Hansen; a pink leather office chair from Herman Miller; a round pink stool on a white base by Knoll; and a slingback, pink leather chair, also from Knoll. More...