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Industrial Design Firm Layer Rethinks the Mattress

Easy to move, recyclable, customizable, and no foam

By Rain Noe - January 27

in Furniture Design | Sustainability

This innovative camping mattress was designed by Layer, British industrial designer Benjamin Hubert's firm.

It relies on individual spring modules that can be nested during transport, and stowed in something roughly the size of a small cooler.

The design is an expansion—or a reduction, perhaps—of a similar system Layer designed for Chinese manufacturer Mazzu.

The idea there was to create a foam-free, recyclable mattress that could be assembled out of individual components. This greatly facilitates transport, repair, and customization. With three different firmness options provided for the springs, users can configure the mattress cushioning for different parts of their body, and partners can individualize their side of the bed.

In China at least, the conventional Mazzu mattress is on the market. The camping design is apparently headed for production, but at press time there was no word on a release date, markets or pricing.

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Zach W

3 months ago

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No foam.... except for the 3" sheet of foam on top.

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- Sean Horita
  
  Zach W
  
  3 months ago
  
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  Juicero model: don't bother with assembling the 72 modules and sleep right on the foam.
  
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Juan Cano

3 months ago

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While I appreciate the innovation and all that, that looks like it would take an hour to setup at camp vs 10 minute blowing up a mattress?

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Charles Flynn

3 months ago

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This reminds me of a material called Prequel, which was based on how water contacts a surface and puts equal pressure at all points on it. Years ago, I spoke with a person on the phone who I thought was the inventor, but who turned out to be the financier. The inventor was Donald Ernest Lipfert.

Here is the patent, from 1977:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4033567.pdf

From the inventor's obituary. at https://www.fomb.org/pages/about_bay/donald_lipfert.htm :

He learned the drafting trade and became a designing engineer, with over 30 patents in his name, and many inventions.He worked on the development of a wire recorder for an early satellite and one of the last mechanical calculators, but he preferred working on things that impacted the human condition, such as a mattress that prevented bedsores in quadriplegic patients.

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  Charles Flynn
  
  3 months ago
  
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  "Prequel" should have been "Prequal". The name comes from "pressure equalization."
  
  The Prequal technology was mentioned in Industrial Design magazine, probably in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was used in some football helmets made for the NFL. Some mattress prototypes were made for the US Army burn center in Texas, and cost about $10,000 each. They were said to be addictive.
  
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Charles Flynn

2 months ago

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The material shown in the patent was called Prequal, not Prequel. The name stands for "pressure equalization."

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Sean Horita

3 months ago

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What makes this a "camping" mattress? What if the ground isn't perfectly level? What if dirt gets in the way of the joints, preventing one of the cylinders from assembly? Why aren't there watercolor renderings?

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