This week has seen some serious life changes for me, most notably the purchase of a new MacBook, marking the end of a three-year run with my beloved Powerbook , and signing a lease on my very own one-bedroom apartment (with a walk-in closet! And full kitchen! And a back yard!) in Brooklyn. I guess this places me in the “big girl” category” now, and naturally has me focused on one thing: furnishing my new digs. Once upon a time I would have done an IKEA run & dump, but editing this site along with years of retail merchandising for various design and organization companies have made me a little uh, snobbish refined my tastes considerably. It’s not that I don’t love me some IKEA — what apartment is complete without a bookcase whose construction makes you borderline suicidal? — but I’m just kind of past the generic dorm-roominess of it. Some people get creative and hack theirs up, and others take cues from the flat-pack system and create their own.

The Emergency Stool 5 is a laser-cut piece of baltic birch plywood which breaks apart to create a stool or a side table in, dare I pun, a snap. The instructions are etched on top of the stool, eliminating the need for paper instructions. A far better conversation piece than one that starts with “So, I got the bloody thing home from Elizabeth, New Jersey, and it had no allen key in it…”

Via NotCot