The ongoing pandemic is on a resurgence once again. If that means anything to our professional lives, we would be working from home for a long time still. Working from home has its own advantages but one of the biggest cons is the fact that you end up spending more hours on the couch completing your work – sans a proper home office setup that is. For the benefit of every working from home couch potato, recognized Portuguese designer João Teixeira has designed Brick Sofa that offers additional convenience while working.
For over a year now, we have been working from home. In the interim, if you have found the best corner to work out of, you may want to add a table or two from Teixeira’s collection. Otherwise, for some reason, the best I can guess being comfort; if you’re working from your sofa still – Teixeira’s Brick love seat with armrest attached in the center supporting a swivel shelf to place your equipment is by far the most practical option out there. The designer has also envisioned single-seater sofas that feature geometric design and promote upright posture while working.
Designed to enhance usability and convenience, the Brick is soft and modern in appearance and will integrate into any home interior and help residents enhance productivity. The swivel shelf is created to hold laptop, tablet and other equipment we use while working. This seamless approach also allows for the integration of the power supply to the armrest that doubles as a side table during your work from home activities.
Soufflé is a dynamic modular interior landscape capable of endless configurations for your flexible lifestyle and different needs. The bed/couch piece works for our rapidly changing world where workplace and home environments collide. Soufflé blends our work, life, and leisure modes into a singular, highly-customizable lounge system.
It challenges the status quo of what workplace and domestic furniture needs to be, what is should look like and how we use it. Initially designed for the studio’s own office space, the creators envisioned a seating system that would suit a variety of commercial settings – be it a sophisticated hotel lobby, retail destination or workplace breakout. At home, Soufflé can be pushed together into pit mode and instantly becomes the perfect spot for movie nights, reading, or naps. Fun fact: the cozy furniture piece its name from the collective noun for clouds which was key to tying all elements together in a way that felt light, approachable, and ever-changing. The Soufflé embodies these qualities through its infinite combinations, soft foam structure and fluid design language. Due to its high degree of modularity, individual pieces can be passed onto family and friends throughout a lifetime – and without any sharp edges or hard materials, it’s 100% child friendly.
The Soufflé also grows with its user: from a bijou studio apartment in your twenties, a family home in your fifties, to a bungalow in your eighties. Whether in isolation or composed into interesting arrangements, Soufflé’s sinuous backrest offsets its rectilinear forms, catching light and casting shadows that add to its playful block module form. Gotta get Soufflé now. Pun intended!
Since we spend most of our time in our homes (especially in 2020), we might as well make those spaces as comfortable and relaxing as possible. One problem that the massage chair business has not solved yet is creating space-efficient furniture. Massage chairs are often bulky, and they might not match the aesthetic of your existing furniture. The solution proposed by the Dong Dong sofa is to create a piece of furniture that just happens to include a massager.
Based on the couch’s design alone, I would buy this product. Its plush, buoyant cushions and its bright yellow color would make for a great statement piece. The design pulls inspiration from a classic inflatable pool tube, which you can see in the couch’s large, bouncy cushions. The curved shape of the backrest also was inspired by ocean waves … and it serves a practical purpose: allowing the massager to blend into the couch.
At a glance, you might not see it. The massager is a cylinder piece that mimics the curvature of the backrest. The piece detaches easily from the backrest, which allows the user to massage any part of their body: not just their back. You can lie down on the couch and prop the massager under your calves, hug it to your body and massage your front, etc. And when you’re finished, you can set the device back in its slot on the couch, which also doubles as a wireless charger.
The detachability offers an advantage for the massager in terms of convenience. Additionally, I think this a business opportunity for the designer as well. Yes, the sofa and massager work well as a set … but why not sell them separately? After all, the massager on its own looks like a cylinder-shaped decorative pillow, which could theoretically blend into anyone’s furniture (if it had the right color). It would certainly offer a more wallet-friendly alternative to the full couch.
Like pandemics, there are many other natural phenomenons that are out of human control. The frequency of these disasters has now increased due to climate change. I have only ever lived on coasts, no matter which country I was in, and being climate-conscious I know that if we don’t get aggressive with our efforts to slow it down the coastal cities will be the first to collapse under massive floods and tsunamis. Scary image isn’t it? Well, we can do two things about it – live more sustainably and design products like Afloat for our Plan B.
Since a couch is something that most homes have, designer Max Bitsan had a pumpkin-turns-into-carriage moment and gave us an angular couch that is also a lifeboat for rainy days…literally. Afloat has been envisioned to fit within the modern interior aesthetics while also being capable of helping you escape situations like floods, tsunamis, storms, dam breaks and more. Turn it upside down and you have a makeshift shelter if you are not trying to stay ‘afloat’ (too soon?). The couch’s mainframe is built like a boat and otherwise is home to bright, fluffy cushions that reassure you of the bright sunny times. Afloat also comes in an armchair size.
On a lighter note, if you live by a lake then you can take your couch out on the water and enjoy the normal times – we now know that the mundane things we enjoyed outside are truly a treasure we took for granted. A lesson learned in advance – don’t take your couch for granted, it can save lives either by you just sitting on it or by you rowing it like a boat.
Bjarke Ingels is a movie star of the architecture world, but he is also an artist and a trailblazing source of inspiration that goes beyond the structures he builds. A decade ago he started spreading the word on his philosophy of sustainable hedonism which bridges the gap between environmentalism and luxury – they can coexist and Ingels showcases that in his work. What sets him apart is that everything he creates has drawn inspirations from ideas, things, art and even games that are totally unrelated to what he is building but still shines through subtly. The latest example to prove this point is the Voxel sofa for a Danish brand, Common Seating, which is a harmony of elements from Minecraft (which Ingels loves!), Q*bert video games as well as the work of Modernist architect Mies van der Rohe.
The Voxel sofa is, in the simplest words, made to adapt to the environment and the user’s needs. Bjarke Ingel’s firm, BIG, looked into how they design their architectural projects like their Lego House, 79 & Park apartment block and the 2016 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion when creating the modular sofa system. The team made a grid of pixel-like blocks to form the seats and called it Voxel. The name and aesthetic of the sofa come from the word’s actual meaning which is a graphic and interface design term for ‘3D pixel’. Voxel will look and mean something unique to every individual user and space.
Voxel can be moved, repaired, flipped, added on to or reduced with ease based on its surroundings. It represents the future of modern furniture – pieces designed to serve the user with multiple functionalities with a form that fits in every room. The sofa system is built with four major parts – armrests, backrests, seats, and legs, and all of these can be interchanged and assembled in multiple ways. The pieces connect with simple metal cylinders that slide into holes and give it its modular essence. “The grid-like system creates a family of units that can be configured into multiple seating scenarios, from single-unit couch to large configurations,” says Jakob Lange, partner at BIG. With the rapid evolution of our culture and lifestyle, Voxel has the ability to mold itself organically to any ecosystem.
The sofa’s design reduces waste by encouraging owners to exchange or repair separate parts if needed, instead of throwing the entire piece out. Voxel is made on-demand and shipped directly from the workshop to ensure it only produces what is necessary and manages waste responsibly. Voxel promotes Bjarke Ingel’s idea of flexibility and sustainable living in its own didactic message of being able to modify and adapt to where we are in the moment with our core values intact. Lang goes on to say, “If it were a person, [it] would be able to move, flex and adapt to different configurations, making it agile in any environment – at home or at work – and responsive to any individual. The person can really grow and live with this sofa long-term.”
Ingels has always viewed architecture as the art and science of making things that fit the way we want to live our lives, it is a constant evolution of ideas. I’ll leave you with this thought inspired by Bjarke Ingels – sustainability is not a moral sacrifice but a design challenge and we have the tools to design ecosystems that optimize the flow of people, resources, economies even…so why not give back with the power to create?
Everyone is quick to replace the hardware around our homes which is fine until our phones go missing! Whether you’ve left your phone in the car or it’s fallen down the side of the couch, controlling everything from your smartphone might not be the best idea. Estab Han designed a remote control that couldn’t possibly be replaced by a smartphone, the Doki.
Doki follows three principals set out by Estab; the remote must be operational without needing to see it, it needs to be more functional than a simple software interface, and it needs to be quick to find. Manifested from the design language used on a tree ax (also where the product gets its name – Doki being the Korean word for ax), Doki has a protrusion on the rear of the remote, which prevents it from sliding down between the cushions. Not only this, Doki has an LED located on the top of the device which will illuminate every 30 seconds, enabling the user to find the remote in a moment of need.
Since America is not nearly fat enough, the Couch Coaster is here to make sure that you are never far from a sugary drink or a beer. It is basically nothing more than a piece of molded silicone with weighted arms that hangs over the sides of an armrest to give you another place to rest your drink.
It also sports a cutout in the back to accommodate coffee mug handles. What it won’t do is to help your existing furniture accommodate your ever-larger love handles.
God forbid that we ever sit anywhere that can’t hold a drink for us. Seriously, we are one step away from becoming those fat helpless blobs in Wall-E. Or maybe I should say $20 away, which is what this thing costs.
Blank couldn’t be a more perfect name for this daybed sofa. Minimalist yet inviting, it strikes that ever elusive balance of bare and cozy. In raw wood and subdued natural toned fabric, it’s the perfect blank canvas for adorning with pillows, throws or other standout items. DO want!
Feel stuck with your sofa?! Don’t! The Frame Sofa offers an entirely new way of customizing and switching up your unique style. Its 6 cushions are secured by a tastefully wrapped pipe frame. The cover on each modular section, from the arms and back to the seat cushions, can be quickly and easily replaced due to wear or simply because you’re ready for a new color motif! Minimal yet comfy, it’s a surefire fit to your ever-changing interior style!
For the first episode of the third season of “Super-Fan Builds” the folks at AWE went all out and created a couch shaped like Toothless from “Dragons: Race to the Edge”. They built it for a hardcore fan of How to Train Your Dragon. I wish I could lay around on a huge dragon like this all day.
This couch looks pretty awesome. They really did a great job with that head. Who wouldn’t want to cuddle with this dragon? You can see the whole build in the video below.
As for the episode itself, it’s obviously sponsored by Dreamcast, and it all seems kinda forced and extra fake, but whatever, keep building cool stuff like this and I’ll still watch. That couch is super cute though.
