A Smart Table That Can Chill Wine, Cook Food, and Charge Devices

Getting together with friends and family is great, but for the person hosting, it can be a bit of a chore. Socializing, keeping drinks chilled and in the hands of your company, and preparing the food are all important parts of making the night a success, but they can't all be done simultaneously. Highsnobiety recently shared a design project by Kram/Weisshaar that would streamline the entertaining process and make the act of having dinner more communal.

The SmartSlab combines heating, cooling, and inductive cooking technologies into one elegantly designed table. Dezeen reports that hidden beneath the surface of the 6-millimeter-thin ceramic tile tabletop (known as SapienStone) are inductive rings and circuitry that turns it into the ultimate piece of multitasking furniture. Warming pads at every seat keeps food from getting cold after it has been plated. It can also be customized to add WiFi stations, wireless charging pads for smartphones, and other elements that suit the owner's needs.

"It's really simple, and it keeps the food hot," designer Clemens Weisshaar told Dezeen, adding that at 42.5 Celsius (108.5 Fahrenheit), the heating elements are warm enough to keep food hot but not to burn human skin. Meanwhile, the Peltier devices transfer the heat and make other parts of the ceramic tile cold enough (-5 Celsius) to chill drinks. A video posted to the SapienStone YouTube page (and embedded above) shows the touch sensor controls at play, and gives us a quick look at how the layers come together to form the innovative table. There is no word on when the table will be available for purchase, but here's hoping that this concept becomes the norm for the future of interior design.

[h/t Highsnobiety]