About Intelligent Furniture

Intelligent Furniture is based in Lewes, East Sussex and provides a range of high-quality standard and bespoke furniture. Our primary offering is an IT Furniture range, we also offer ancillary furniture or non-technological furniture as required.

Intelligent Furniture supplies products to all sectors. Previous clients include:

Hilton

SAS Radisson

The Jumeirah Beach Hotel

Kempinski

The Mandarin Oriental

The London 2012 Olympic Committee

Northamptonshire County Council

M&C Saatchi

Stockport College

The University of Wolverhampton

Chaucer School

Marish Primary School

How it Works

Integrated in our furniture is a unique and patented remote control for a PC. Known as the Freemote, it sits within the desk's worksurface and duplicates the key PC controls at the user's fingertips. This means an industry-standard PC can be hidden up to 20 metres away with no loss of functionality.

Read more about the application here.

 

David Gilbert, Founder of Intelligent Furniture

In 1977, as manager of an antique restoration and exporting company, David computerised the business by building the computer and developing an operating system to run it. (This was 4 years before Bill Gates started Microsoft.) His 'personal computer' replaced dozens of comptometer operators and did a job, taking 40 people one week, in just five minutes. For David, it was a vision of the future.

He started his own Company in 1984, exporting restored furniture. Over the coming years the computer became an everyday object but David was always amazed that although the PC evolved enormously internally since the early 80s, the way it presented itself was NOT changing. The crazy PC metal box was still put on, or under, a desk then had loads of wires plugged into it... mouse, keyboard, screen, speakers, power cable, network cable etc. David used to imagine watching a Star Trek movie where Mr Spock was sitting at his console with a giant tower-case between his legs... which of course never happened, because the 'future of computing' is always portrayed as 'invisible and integrated.'

David's company was now also building furniture and one day in the early 90s he tripped over the cables dangling from the tower-case PC. At that 'Eureka' moment, it occurred to him to integrate the PC technology into the desk and avoid the obvious trip hazards. The reason the PC sits in such an obtrusive way in your space, is that you have to touch your computer to make it work... e.g. turn it on, put things into it like USB memory sticks, or CDs/DVDs....so David decided to address this. His company then built the world's first truly integrated computer into a desk. These early incarnations looked great, but could not be supported worldwide and required a very unique PC to be used.

During the first decade of the 21st century, David started developing a unique interface that could convert any industry standard PC into a remote-controlled PC. This enabled some radical and innovative solutions while maintaining the PC onsite warranty. This solution created a unique opportunity to integrate the computer and furniture... and the Intelligent Furniture solution was born.