Smart Furniture × Sustainable Materials × Cross-disciplinary Design

In recent years, major furniture fairs around the world have revealed a noticeable shift: furniture is increasingly being used to respond to more complex ways of living. How well we sleep at home, how comfortable everyday use feels, how work and rest are balanced within the same space, and even how environmental concerns are internalised — all of these considerations are gradually shaping design decisions.

Against this backdrop, “smart furniture,” “sustainable materials,” and “cross-disciplinary design” have emerged as three recurring keywords within the design discourse. This year’s CIFF Guangzhou offers a particularly clear lens through which to observe how these threads are taking form — and where contemporary furniture design may be heading next.

Smart furniture, from functional upgrades to understanding daily life

The rapid rise of smart furniture is less about technological novelty and more about its growing sensitivity to everyday human needs. When technology moves beyond feature accumulation and begins to interpret the body and daily rhythms, “smart” design starts to feel genuinely relevant.

At the Smart Ecosystem Pavilion (Hall 5.2), the focus on sleep technology highlights this shift. Brands are increasingly attempting to bring the idea of “sleeping well” back to the centre of daily life.

For example, DSleep, the high-end smart sleep brand under Goodnight Group, presents its Auto3Pro AI adaptive smart bed, which adjusts support in real time based on posture and pressure distribution. Sleepone AI Mattress 3.0 by Shushi Intelligent combines sensing technology with AI algorithms to deliver a quieter, more responsive and human-centred sleep experience.

At the 55th CIFF Guangzhou, the “Sleep Therapy – Massage Equipment Zone” further illustrated how massage devices are merging with sleep systems. Massage chairs are no longer standalone products; instead, they are increasingly integrated with mattresses and smart systems to form “massage + sleep” scenarios, where relaxation becomes part of the pre-sleep routine.

In the workplace, smart furniture has similarly evolved beyond the simple mechanics of sit-stand desks. The emphasis now lies in how desks, electrical systems, sensors and cable management are integrated into a seamless user experience.
The UP 7 sit-stand desk by Sunon, for instance, incorporates radar-based human sensing within the desk structure to detect sitting and standing behaviour in real time, offering reminders based on actual sedentary patterns — allowing office furniture to respond directly to the physical realities of long working hours.

Behind these user-facing innovations, manufacturing upgrades remain essential. In the Production Equipment Zone at Area B of the Canton Fair Complex, CIFF presents a full-process intelligent manufacturing ecosystem built around Industry 4.0 and flexible production. From CNC panel saws and smart machining centres to automated flexible production lines and intelligent packaging systems showcased by KDT Machinery, precision and adaptability form the backbone of furniture’s intelligent evolution.

Even hardware components are undergoing a transformation. In the Hardware & Accessories Zone, functional hardware is shifting from mechanical quality to intelligent responsiveness. ONUS’s smart lifting systems adapt storage and retrieval to different user heights and scenarios; Meiliwang’s intelligent mobile base systems allow cabinets to move freely across living spaces via buttons, remote controls, apps or voice commands; and TUTTI Hardware’s magnetic levitation sliding system T908 integrates intelligent door control and motion learning, combining safety with near-silent operation.

Sustainable materials as a non-negotiable premise

Across the furniture industry, a shared understanding is gradually taking shape: design no longer answers only whether something looks good, but also where materials come from, how they are produced, and where they go at the end of their life cycle. Once sustainability is embedded into the design process, green materials become less of a choice and more of a prerequisite.

At CIFF Guangzhou, the Decor & Textile Exhibition themed “Breakthrough” serves as an entry point for observing this transition. Some brands approach sustainability through cultural narratives and everyday aesthetics, while others focus on material innovation, reinterpreting traditional crafts such as ceramics, glass and textiles through contemporary, sustainable lenses.

Last year’s “Green East · Bamboo Culture & Life Exhibition” offered a concrete response to this mindset. Eighteen companies across the bamboo industry chain explored the concept of “bamboo as an alternative to plastic,” presenting complete bamboo-based home scenarios. Bamboo was positioned not only as an eco-friendly material, but also as a natural, understated resource capable of being fully absorbed into contemporary design language.

The CMF Trends LAB pushes this conversation further upstream, towards material origins. Bio-based materials and biodegradable technologies are appearing more frequently in design vocabularies, as brands and designers attempt to reduce carbon footprints from the earliest design stages.

Among this year’s CMF Trends LAB themes, “Maximize Use of Material Lab” stands out as a timely response to sustainable design challenges. Curated by colour and material designer and trend forecaster Laura Perryman, the exhibition explores the reuse of waste materials and offcuts, transforming them into functional new materials or products — extending material life cycles while creating new contexts for use.

As sustainability becomes a global consensus, furniture is increasingly expected to address environmental responsibility alongside efficiency and aesthetics. From last year’s CIFF Charm Road to the upcoming 2.0 edition, low-carbon office environments form a recurring narrative within the commercial exhibition. Meanwhile, the Office Environment Theme Pavilion, guided by the concept “Structure · Boundaryless · Sustainable,” integrates sustainable materials into future workplace imaginaries, embedding green thinking naturally into spatial design.

Cross-disciplinary design and the redefinition of the designer’s role

Fields once considered distant from furniture — automotive, home appliances, technology, fashion, and even anime IP — are becoming important collaborators for designers. For practitioners, this expansion opens access to new usage scenarios and markets previously beyond reach.

A long-term collaboration between Benwu Studio and Hermès illustrates this shift. Since 2014, the partnership has spanned window displays, exhibition design and special product development, allowing an independent studio to integrate narrative, art and commerce into a cohesive expression, while offering the brand fresh perspectives within its established system.

Another notable example is architect Ma Yansong’s installation “Emotional Spaceship” for HC28 Maison. Suspended above the booth’s central atrium, the mirrored structure functions not merely as a visual statement but as an architectural intervention into the relationship between furniture, space and people. Reflecting bodies, objects and surroundings in motion, the installation blurs the boundary between reality and imagination, transforming the booth into an immersive environment rather than a conventional product display.

Through such cross-disciplinary collaborations, architecture, art and furniture design increasingly overlap — enabling brands to be experienced, understood and remembered in ways that extend beyond the object itself.