Electrolux Design Lab’s Flatshare Fridge by Stefan Buchberger

If you have roommates with eating habits or hygiene standards very different to yours, or if you are fed up with them leaving moldy leftovers in the fridge, or if you cannot agree with your flatmates whose turn it is to clean the fridge out, spare a thought for the Flatshare Fridge, a concept developed by Stefan Buchberger, an Austrian design student who was one of the nine finalists in the Electrolux Design Lab competition.

You can consider the Flatshare Fridge either a fantastically useful appliance to have or a rather silly invention, but you cannot deny its practicality or originality. This modular refrigerator has several tetris-like separate compartments, a tall section for bottle storage and a smaller side section for fruits, vegetables, and frozen foods.

Another great and utterly useful feature of the Flatshare Fridge is that you can purchase additional compartments when another flatmate moves in. Not to mention that the Flatshare Fridge can be customized to your liking – you can choose the colour and the pattern, or add and remove a bottle opener and a whiteboard.

This fridge is not only suitable for co-habitating college students, dorm lounges and flatmates, but workplaces too. Stefan Buchberger came up with the idea of having a shared fridge following a semester-long topic about how to keep your personal space neat and clean. “I decided to create Flatshare fridge because there is nothing more disgusting than a dirty fridge in a shared flat,” says Buchberger. “At the time, I was living in such a flat!”