This Furniture Rocks

Pottery Barn also went after the youth market first, with an MP3-compatible chair and shelving unit sold through PBteen last year. Based on the success of those two items, this summer the company launched its Smart Technology collection, an entire line of furniture and accessories designed with all portable electronics in mind: bulletin boards with speakers; tabletop universal charging stations; organizational cabinets with hidden power strips; desks with integrated outlets, phone and Ethernet jacks, and USB ports.

Also this summer, Aspenhome, a furniture manufacturer in Phoenix, launched a line of multi-tasking furniture, including night and end tables with drawers for recharging devices, filing paperwork and storing printers and laptops.

But perhaps nothing rivals the iPod enthusiasm represented by the $14,000 Concerto table by furniture designers Nicholas Lovegrove and Demian Repucci. Shaped like a grand piano, the high-gloss white dining table has speakers under the middle leaf and an iPod docking station near the center so the host can control dinner music without having to get up.

With the dramatic look and price tag, the tables aren't exactly flying out the door, Lovegrove said, but the iPod factor has given the designers visibility in markets they hadn't previously reached, from music organizations to devout Mac users and bloggers. "The addition of the iPod has brought the table to another level entirely," Lovegrove said. "It has opened an incredible amount of doors."

But while designing furniture with integrated technology can seem a smart business move, there are risks involved.

"When you incorporate technology, it can take over," Lovegrove said. "We wanted to make a beautiful piece of furniture primarily, not a tech piece. There is a fine balance. . . . We didn't want [the table] offered in a Sharper Image."

Not that Lovegrove and Repucci are complaining. In fact, they have built on their iPod-fueled visibility by offering recipes for use with their table, which can be found on their Web site, http://www.concertotable.com. A playlist of downloadable dinner music is also available -- from iTunes, of course.

The chief danger in designing home furnishings around technology is the inevitability that the bed or dining table will be rendered obsolete by the very technology it's built around. How long will it be before the currently innovative video-gaming chairs with speakers, surround sound and wireless capabilities wind up on Craigslist alongside the hulking TV armoires made unnecessary by flat-screen technology?

"There's probably going to be a time in the not-too-distant future when we look back at these items and they will look passe," Hirschhaut said. "There's always going to be something new."