In increasingly small urban apartments where every inch counts, a piece of furniture that transforms from a coffee table to a dining table in seconds, hides a lot of storage or folds up to just one inch thick can open up a lot of usable space. These transforming table designs completely rethink the simple surface, sometimes using complex engineering to expand and contract.

Coffee to Dinner Tables by Ozzio Design

Anyone with a tiny studio apartment can appreciate the convenience of a piece of furniture that functions as a coffee table for most of the day, but raises up to dining level when needed. These two convertible tables by Ozzio look clean and modern, have adjustable heights and come in various colors and sizes for maximum adaptability.

Tree Ring Table Cuts Itself in Half

A table that resembles the cross-section of a tree trunk when compact and placed against a wall opens up to become fully round, a third leg swinging to the side to offer support. Designer Isariya Boon took inspiration from onion rings to create this hardwood and steel table with multiple personalities.

Flip Table Hides Six Stools

The wooden casing of the Flip coffee table opens up to become a three-sided dining table, the storage underneath transforming into six stools.

Kaleidoscopic Capstan Table Spins to Enlarge

Is this the world’s most highly-engineered dining table? The Fletcher Capstan features six wedge-shaped leaves that pull back to reveal a star shape that grows as the table expands from about 6.5 feet across to a maximum width of 30 feet. The process of transforming it is almost like a performance as the table opens to show off its inner components.

The Daily Shelter: Table to Child’s Fort

Only those who ‘know its secrets’ would ever guess that this ordinary-looking dining table by Ingrid Brandth doubles as a tiny house. Says the designer, “… it can be transformed into a shelter where one can hide from scary sounds, ghosts or family members. Just like a snail feels safe in its house.”

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Transforming Tables 16 Smart Space Saving Surface Designs

What started as a set of infinitely-flexible table legs has now spawned a second but equally stellar sibling design: a series of wall brackets that let you turn scraps into shelving and switch out surfaces whenever you find something neat and new (or old).

Made in Detroit, the Floyd Leg system allows users to choose what kind of material they want to create anything from desks to dining, coffee, side or even ping-pong tables. And for any who find this specific solution too expensive, it could also be viewed as great inspiration for do-it-yourself alternatives.

The owner simply splices the desired surface between the colorful and variable-height brackets, be it reused lumber and scraps or new off-the-shelf boards – as a bonus, the bracket system means the surfaces can also be uneven.

Using the same design strategies, the Floyd Shelf mounts to walls and will let you swap in and out whatever you want to use With its industrial aesthetic, the adjustable bracket set lends itself particularly well to rugged or worn found materials.

“I was moving frequently between cities and constantly disposing of furniture. The legs were born out of this circumstance and the idea also resonated with our friends. We decided to launch a Kickstarter to gauge what the public reaction would be to the legs,” says Kyle Hoff, creator and co-founder. With an initial goal of producing 100 sets, the pair raised funds for an initial run of over 1,500 sets and shipped to 33 countries.

“Backers sent in photographs of their creations. It was exciting to see people employ the legs in ways that reflected their own living spaces,” says Alex O’Dell, co-founder. The Floyd Legs are produced in Detroit utilizing the existing manufacturing infrastructure. “We appreciate having our production facility only a 10 minute drive away. It allows us to more close- ly integrate the manufacturing and design processes, while also ensuring the quality of our prod-ucts,” says Hoff.

The Floyd Leg serves as a pilot piece for a greater line of products that the company will be launching in September 2014. “We’re committed to producing simple, flexible furniture made for denser living in cities. High design furniture is inaccessible and mass produced often means disposable,” says O’Dell. “One of our goals is to really rethink the way people buy and engage with furniture—from the purchasing experience to shipping and assembly,” says Hoff.

Meandering rivers, icebergs and a deep blue abyss are invoked in layers of blue-green glass, burled wood and cast concrete and translated into tables. Ranging from self-taught artists crafting each piece by hand to high-end designers using precision laser-cutting machinery, these three sculptors and furniture makers take inspiration from the natural world to make practical pieces that mimic topography.

River Collection by Greg Klassen

The naturally wavy edges of discarded lumber, considered too imperfect for standard usage in construction and furniture, are aligned just right and joined with strips of pale blue-green glass to become watery landscapes.

Taking inspiration from the beautiful natural scenery of his home in the Pacific Northwest, theologist-turned-furniture-maker Greg Klassen sources his wood at construction sites and from fallen trees in the forest. “I Love the idea of taken a discarded tree and giving it a new life,” he says.

“The collection is inspired by the exciting edges and vivid grains found in the trees sustainably taken from the banks of the Nooksack River that twists below my studio.”

Designs include the striking River Console, with its undulating ribbon of water, the Pond Table carved from a massive maple trunk, and Folded River, an asymmetrical L-shaped design in which the glass trails down one side.

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Topographic Tables 12 Terrain Inspired Furniture Designs

Pool is one of those great American hobbies that never seems to get old. As much as we might want to play every day, not everyone has the space to fit an entire pool table into their home. These three brilliant solutions (plus a bonus pool table that wouldn’t save any space, but would definitely be a conversation piece) might finally be enough to convince you to save your quarters and play at home instead.

Disappearing Pool Table

There’s honestly no better solution for hiding something than having it pop out of the floor only when you need it. The Disappearing Pool Table from Stage Engineering does just that: when it’s hidden away, the only clue that it’s there is a huge rectangular cutout in the floor. When you activate some sort of mechanism, the cutout floor drops down and slides away, exposing a full-size pool table that then rises up on a platform to floor level. There isn’t much information available other than this video, but the video is enough to convince us: we want one.

Dining Table Conversion Kit

Pool table covers are nothing new – you unfold a foam mat or plop a piece of wood down onto the pool table and it becomes a place for dining or playing ping-pong. But the Fusion collection of tables offers a slightly more high-class approach to the idea. The high-quality pool tables come with wooden leaves that slide on securely to stay put for the purposes of eating at the table. The resulting dining table is quite elegant and not at all what you might expect of covered-over pool table.

Rotating Table

The Bentley Dolphin Rollover Pool Dining Table might be a mouthful, but it’s a fun piece of furniture that leads a double life. On one side it’s a standard-size pool, snooker, or billiards table. Undo the security latches and spin the tabletop upside-down in the frame and it becomes a dining table with a solid wood top or a beautiful inlaid pattern top. The makers suggest that the flat top can also be used as a conference table, but we suspect there wouldn’t be much business going on when there are clearly games of pool to be played.

Converted VW Bus

The VW Bus pool table is different from the others here because its transformation was one-way and permanent, but it did once serve a very different purpose so deserves a mention. It is made from the real chassis of an old Volkswagen that was then fitted with a wood and felt top. It’s probably not regulation size and it definitely won’t be level, but those are small details. What really matters is that someone took the time and care to craft this seriously awesome one-of-a-kind Volkswagen/pool table mashup, which is an undeniably beautiful thing.

The Tangible Media Group from MIT has developed an approach to responsive design in physical space that is both conceptual and plausible, futuristic yet already a reality.

Displaying their work this year at Milan, the group unveiled Transform, an extension of their amazing interactive inFORM user experience invention from last year.

1,000 independently-mobile squares shift up and down to shape bowls and surfaces – with even more such ‘pixels’ of a soft material the same technology could be applied to chairs and couches, too.

The morphing surfaces in play can be manipulated in all kind of ways, from passively sensing your mood (and changing shape accordingly) to responding directly to commands, gestures, movements or remote control. Their approach grows out of a notion that we increasingly take for granted: computers are moving into everything, not just dedicated laptops or handheld devices but everyday objects all around us.

This last video shows where it all started, with inFORM, a “Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table’s surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance.”