Platinum Winner of the International Architecture & Design Awards 2024
Heat only where you are - a beautiful rug with integrated smart heating
Interior
Intelligent & Smart Home Design
Completed / Professional Category
Architect / Designer:
Dr. Tilman Sauter
Studio:
fior Familie GmbH
Design Team:
Laaya Sauter (designer, fiorhome)
Copyright:
fiorhome
Country:
Germany
The vision: To significantly reduce the energy demand for heating to save heating costs and reduce our global footprint.
The plan: To create smart heating zones within a room which heat only where you are and only for the time, a person is in the zone.
The product: A smart heatable rug with 4 unique technologies: (1) safe to use and to place sharp objects upon, (2) efficient with a directed heat to the room and not to the floor, (3) smart to enable specific heating times through an app and (4) a sustainable rug based on a multilayer architecture.
The rug design: With less than 5 mm in thickness the fiorhome zonal heat technology is basically invisible. The rug material is chosen based on heat conduction as well as on sustainability criteria. Typically a rug consists of 3 components: the fiber or pile, a backing and a glue that holds everything together. The glue is the main challenge in terms of recycling, because each component cannot be separated individually anymore. Instead, we have chosen a rug based on 2 components: the fiber or pile and the backing without glue. The backing is stretched during production of the fibers, after that the tension is released and the backing holds the fibers firmly together. The rug can now be made from a single material (e.g. cotton or polypropylene). On top, the heat from below is not blocked by the glue, so a directional heating to the room can be realized.
The vision: To significantly reduce the energy demand for heating to save heating costs and reduce our global footprint.
The plan: To create smart heating zones within a room which heat only where you are and only for the time, a person is in the zone.
The product: A smart heatable rug with 4 unique technologies: (1) safe to use and to place sharp objects upon, (2) efficient with a directed heat to the room and not to the floor, (3) smart to enable specific heating times through an app and (4) a sustainable rug based on a multilayer architecture.
The rug design: With less than 5 mm in thickness the fiorhome zonal heat technology is basically invisible. The rug material is chosen based on heat conduction as well as on sustainability criteria. Typically a rug consists of 3 components: the fiber or pile, a backing and a glue that holds everything together. The glue is the main challenge in terms of recycling, because each component cannot be separated individually anymore. Instead, we have chosen a rug based on 2 components: the fiber or pile and the backing without glue. The backing is stretched during production of the fibers, after that the tension is released and the backing holds the fibers firmly together. The rug can now be made from a single material (e.g. cotton or polypropylene). On top, the heat from below is not blocked by the glue, so a directional heating to the room can be realized.
fior Familie GmbH
At fiorhome we believe in improving life through flooring. Rugs have a 2000+ year history and we want to add a next level of technology to it: both in terms of increased sustainability and increased usability. Our team consists of Persian artists and German engineers. We embrace this diversity to drive the change.
Rugs are a beautiful piece of interior design and our goal is to add technology without changing this beauty.