Fireplaces have been incorporated into homes for ages galore. They’re a humble and trustworthy source of heat and have kept people warm through the years. However, the traditional fireplaces don’t make an ideal fit for our modern urban homes! Space is any way at a premium, and we really can’t afford to squeeze in a space-consuming fireplace into our constrained homes. But designers have been adding modern twists to the quintessential fireplaces! These ergonomic and smart designs provide heat while also functionally fitting into our homes. Some of them are even portable, while others are ideal for placing in your backyard. We’ve curated a range of the most innovative and unique fireplaces we had the pleasure of coming across. Stay warm!
The Rocco multifunctional outdoor furniture by Moróro is a barbecue, a sofa, a champagne bar, and more! 2020 has been about creating intimate moments at home, and nothing says intimate like a cozy evening in your backyard! To take things up a notch, we have Rocco which is an all-rounder piece of outdoor furniture. Its clever design transforms it from a fun barbecue into a sofa or champagne bar and even a smores pit – I think it’s safe to say Rocco is an essential this year! You can add a fire bowl to the base or choose from various other accessories like a grill, tabletop, ice bucket, and parasol base. Customize Rocco to fit what you define as a chill evening.
Designed by Lorna De Santos, this fireplace has been inspired by a Japanese philosophy! Fireplaces are usually an attraction point in the interior decor of a space but in Casa Decor, it is more of a hidden gem. The team has an appreciation for the traditional Japanese aesthetics inspired by the wabi-sabi philosophy which encourages an appreciation for imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete things. The characteristics of wabi-sabi aesthetics and principles include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and the appreciation of both natural objects and the forces of nature – something that is clearly seen throughout the project and this fireplace. The designer viewed the crack in the wall as a gap in the professional architectural scene and turned it into an opportunity that elevated the room, much like cracks being metaphorical openings leading to projects that make you immerse yourself into a study that will eventually give you winds. Casa Decor is a range of home products designed keeping sustainability in mind.
A portable smart fireplace is what we need for this unprecedented holiday season! My Warmth by Simon Pavy is a conceptual fireplace that was created to make having a fireplace accessible despite how your interior is laid out. The smart portable appliance also gives you the same cozy vibes while reducing work that comes with a traditional fireplace. My Warmth is the size of a humidifier or an air purifier so it doesn’t take a lot of space in your living room. There is a dial to control the temperature so you can pick the right degree for toasty toes or crank it up for smores! The all brushed aluminum gives it a sleek aesthetic that reminds me of glass domes that cover baked goods – as one should have by the fireplace. My Warmth lets you enjoy the quintessential holiday vibes with your own portable fireplace. I can already hear Nat King Cole start on those chestnuts!
There is something about looking into flames that brings us closer to our inner self and keeps us transfixed there. However, with the advent of electric heating devices, we no longer get to sit and relish this experience at our homes. There are many who still keep a traditional fireplace or a gas stove in their houses. But, their purpose is limited to either heating or cooking and the flames are always entrapped in a black industrial frame that does not do justice to their spell-binding liveliness. Designer Jeong Kim has taken a rather unique approach to this idea by designing a stove that showcases the flames in their captivating brilliance. He has created ‘Contact Surface’, a stove that also works as an ornamental piece to go with your furniture. The design is as much attractive as it is functional. The body features a glass door with various color gradients and a lever on the side which locks and unlocks the door. The action of opening however is vertical, keeping the hot glass safely away from the user’s touch and in steady movement instead of having it swing around randomly.
The Bigfoot Table comes handcrafted out of Western Red Cedar wood with a built-in lightweight stainless steel endoskeleton to provide it with its strength. Right in the center of the table lies an opening that reveals a rectangular fireplace built right into the tabletop. The fireplace is supplied with fuel using a propane canister that can be placed in the hollow space below and comes with a metal outer-casing to protect the wood from getting burnt. Scattered within the fireplace pit are faux-stones that help create a truly remarkable burning surface that’s perfect for roasting smores on, and the fire can be ignited electrically with a simple push of a button and even regulated with the turn of a knob. The fireplace cover is even designed to be reversed, with a game of Mancala integrated into its flip-side – with the ability to use the firestones as game pieces!
A portable fireplace that ditches the age-old flame for a fiery vortex, the SPIN is absolutely alluring to look at. The portable fireplace, or fire vortex if you’re the technical kind, can be used indoors or outdoors. It comes with a base that holds the fire starter, and an optional glass hood that helps expand the flame to make the vortex bigger and more visible. The SPIN works by using three guide plates that cause air to rotate before it reaches the flame. The thermal lift of the flame itself accelerates the air, creating a flaming vortex, and the chimney effect caused by SPIN’s glass tube boosts the flow by up to 500% without any extra energy, allowing the vortex to rise significantly higher. The SPIN also packs an ‘extinguisher lid’ made from stainless steel that you can directly place on the top of the glass tube, breaking the airflow and extinguishing the flame.
Wood burning fireplaces are quickly becoming a thing of the past, especially if you reside in a big city apartment or new home… but that doesn’t mean you can’t get cozy! Designed by a group from the University of Buenos Aires, the AWA home heater is a modern interpretation of the familiar form of the fluted fireplace that utilizes new thermal power tech to fill your home with warmth and ambiance. The design generates thermal power through electrolysis, breaking the bonds in the water molecules and then combusting the separated hydrogen. The hot air rises along the body releasing heat by the means of convection using the ventilations allocated in the upper part. At the same time, the central core made of refractory ceramics radiates warmth, even once it’s turned off. Better yet, it uses 40% less energy compared to a classic stove, avoids troublesome code requirements, and be a whole lot safer!
‘In frame’ is a modern take on the traditional fireplace and it aims to connect the past and the present through carefully considered design. The elegant frame that surrounds the circular central section has been designed to be rotational, allowing it to be easily adjusted. This frame also creates an area to hang basic laundry, so it can dry. In frame’s flexibility doesn’t end there, the user has the choice of either hanging it on the wall, so it mimics the location of a traditional fireplace, or having it freestanding in the center of the room.
Taking terms like “Playing with fire” and “Drop it like it’s hot” a little too literally (or should I say lit-erally), the Fireside Audiobox turns audio into a pyrotechnic performance, by channeling the sound through a tube of propane gas. Using an apparatus developed in 1905 by Heinrich Rubens, the Fireside Audiobox is a wireless speaker with a certain retro allure that completely gets overshadowed once you light the tube on the speaker’s upper end, resulting in a dance of flames! Audio frequencies play on the intensity of the flames, causing them to jump along with the music, making for a speaker that is bound to be the centerpiece at any and every house party. Perfect for the weather we’ll soon be experiencing, and with the festive season coming up, the Fireside Audiobox could add a wireless Bluetooth speaker, a fireplace, and an unignorable charm to your living room! Maybe avoid trying to roast snacks over this fire though!
The Zippo Hand Warmer basically gives out heat without a visible flame. It does this by burning lighter fluid through a proprietary carbon felt filter (much like steel wool). What you get as a result is heat without fire. Simply pop the cap and the burner unit off and pour the desired amount of lighter fluid into the hand warmer (a full tank should give you 12 hours). Then pop the burner unit on and hold it close to a naked flame. Within seconds, the burner will begin emanating heat, after which you can just place the perforated cap back on and stash the Hand Warmer in your pocket (and dig your hands into it every few minutes for warmth), merrily going about your day while everybody else is vigorously rubbing their palms together like cavemen. It’s a little fireplace for your pocket!
