Tag Archives: Patricia Urquiola

Iconic Female Designer Patricia Urquiola Upgrades Her Lowland Sofa With A Softer Composition

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Spanish designer and architect Patricia Urquiola is known for her eye-catching creations which are usually characterized by stained-glass panels or entire interior redesigns. She heavily focuses on modern style accentuated with feminine accents and intriguing elements. She is also known for her strong support of female designers. “Where women differ from males is in their flexibility, adaptability, and ability to multitask,” Urquiola said to Elle Decor in 2010. “We must be capable of surviving and even those two qualities—flexibility and adaptability—are extremely important to me in design.” And, she recently updated her Lowland Sofa for the Italian brand Moroso, giving it the name Loveland.

Designer: Patricia Urquiola for Moroso

Patricia Urqouila upgraded her Lowland sofa for the Italian brand Moroso, imparting it with a softer composition, and adorning it with a new name – Loveland. The three-seater sofa design adapts the previous design which was created in 2000. It features lower-positioned armrests, and a rounded backrest shape, which gives the sofa a gentler and more pebble-like appearance.

“The new design choices enhance the architectural qualities of the series while maintaining the sophisticated rationalist mood of this sofa, as a stand-alone piece or in a composition,” said Moroso. The Loveland sofa features a modernist steel base, which is paired up with warm and contemporary wood, and arranged at interesting sculptural angles.

Lowland was upgraded to Loveland to implement “a different approach to sustainability”. With Loveland, they eliminated developing a whole new product, and instead, they jazzed up a beloved classic to create an eternal and evergreen piece. There isn’t any unnecessary production or any additional waste. Resources are saved and minimized, as a pre-existing furniture piece is transformed and elevated. The Loveland sofa is available with or without armrests and can be upholstered in fabric or leather. You can choose between Honey, Tropical Wood, or Coffee finishes for the sofa’s wooden base.

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Patricia Urquiola’s armchair design for Cassina explores the gender-bias through furniture

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What are the first words you think of when you hear the word ‘masculine’? Chances are those words were a derivative or a synonym of words like hard, rugged, strong. Similarly, when you play the word association test with ‘feminine’, you’re more likely to think about grace, softness, elegance. Patricia Urquiola’s Gender Armchair for Cassina explores these characteristics and how they can coexist in furniture. The Gender armchair aims at addressing the bias of masculinity and femininity being defined the way they are. The chair lets you see what you want to see – it’s both hard, with a strong internal framework, yet soft, with padding. The armchair uses large volumes, which one may consider masculine, but features a gently curved silhouette, a common trait associated with femininity. The armchair, which pairs with a similarly designed leg-rest, explores the dichotomy of gender with colors too, using complementing colors that are a combination of subdued and vibrant.

If the Gender armchair reminds you of the Eames Lounge Chair, it’s perhaps by design. Both chairs approach their design the same way, with a combination of hard and soft – seen in the Eames chair’s hard plywood back and soft leather cushions. Patricia Urquiola, however, addresses it more directly with the Gender armchair, bringing this element of observation into the limelight.

Designer: Patricia Urquiola for Cassina