The sideboard is back.

The sideboard is back. Highly practical and hugely decorative offers the sideboard storage space for books, multimedia devices and other objects that can be quickly hidden behind sliding doors or in drawers when not in use. At the same time, its shelves and display windows function as focal points, allowing favourite books, vases and other decorative accessories to be shown in the right light and brought to the fore by their owners.

Positioned within the room itself, sideboards also serve an architectural purpose as room dividers, for example. We would like to introduce you to some representatives of this type of furniture, who especially caught our eye at the imm cologne 2019.

The new Hifive sideboard from Norwegian firm Northern was designed to hold devices such as receivers, amplifiers and multimedia players. In its longest version (2 metres), the sideboard offers four open units and two cupboards, each with a tambour door. Cables and devices can be neatly hidden away behind the flexible wooden panels. The open units are dimensioned to accommodate vinyl LPs, but are also suited to other music and television media too. The furniture is available in smoked oak veneer, black-painted oak veneer and light-coloured oiled oak veneer. By contrast, it stands on slender metal legs. The single units can be arranged individually on the base frame. A wooden top ensures a uniform surface. If no base is required, the single units can be mounted directly to the wall.

With the “just cube” customisable sideboard system by interlübke you can create your own unique piece of furniture very easily: as a sideboard, as a display case, floor-standing, wall-mounted, with or without feet, with or without recessed handles. The “bold” version is dominated by striking horizontal joints. This design celebrates the beauty of symmetry by dividing up the cupboard fronts in a sophisticated interplay of joints that is continued around the sides. The recessed handles are also available to purchase in other shades of matt paint. For the slightly sunken top panels, on the other hand, there is a choice of lacquer, glass, wood, aluminium, leather or stone in matching monochrome, or – as a deliberate contrast to the main body – in another shade.

The distinctly elegant appearance of the natural-wood highboard from Team 7’s filigno range is captivating. To remain faithful to the material, the company has developed a new wooden handle that can be produced in the chosen wood type to match the furniture series. At 12 mm thick, the delicate, yet highly functional, handles are perfectly suited to the object’s equally slim jacket of natural wood. A small recess has been cut underneath the new wooden handle to provide improved grip for the fingers when it is grasped. The grain pattern can also be selected individually and either oriented to run vertically or horizontally. Alternatively, it’s even possible to choose a mix of the two veining directions.

The Farns is a sideboard from Walter Knoll that pays homage to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, former Bauhaus director and avant-garde architect. As a consequence, the sideboard is more an architectural object than a piece of furniture and is named after van der Rohe’s famous Farnsworth House – the prototype for all glass structures. The Farns plays with light and shadow, with form and geometry, wood and glass. The object’s doors can be opened 180 degrees, creating a piece of space-defining furniture that offers various aspects for innumerable lighting effects. Its construction and statics remain a mystery that holds the observer under its spell.