You can also encounter them in offices, hotels, lobbies, waiting rooms, and bars and cafes. In homes, couches are most commonly placed in living rooms and lounges but can be found in other areas, from bedrooms (smaller sofas) to dining rooms. They can be used for sleeping as well, with some models known as sleeper couches being able to transform into beds.īoth are primarily intended for sitting, but as most of us have experienced, couches and some larger sofas can take up the role of a bed just fine. The basic sofa can be described as an upholstered bench.Ĭouches are intended to fit in three to four people, are softer and comfier. It usually features armrests, upholstery, and cushions. What are Couches and What are Sofas?Ī sofa is a piece of furniture designed so two or a maximum of three people can take a seat. Keep on reading because shortly, we will start to explore this surprisingly diverse world of sofas and couches. sofa” – it’s about dozens of different styles of each. That’s where things start to get complicated. You can find types with many overlapping features. However, both couches and sofas have evolved together, and today the term is often used interchangeably. Consequently, sofas are smaller, intended for sitting and usually host up to two people, and couches are more spacey and can take a roll of a bed. The word “ couch” is derived from the French word “ coucher” which means “lie down”, and “ sofa” comes from the Arabic word “ suffah” which describes a cushioned wooden bench. Historically, couches and sofas have been slightly different. Working with Gufram, the foam furniture innovator du jour, Audrito realized the now-iconic cartoonish sofa called Marilyn (it now goes by Bocca), as an homage to both the crimson-mouthed starlet and the gym’s lipstick-loving owner, Marilyn Garosci.Have you ever wondered if that cozy furniture piece that makes every house feel like a home is a couch or a sofa? Several iterations of this idea were made in the 1930s, all with slight variations, and all served as inspiration, decades later in 1970, to Italian designer Franco Audrito of Studio 65 who had just been commissioned to design a fitness center in Milan. As Dalí worked on a few for James, across the channel, Paris decorator Jean-Michel Frank was making his own riff-a lips-shaped sofa for the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. It starts with a 1935 watercolor by Salvador Dalí in which the surrealist artist portrayed the actress Mae West with a sofa for a mouth-a furnishing so provocative that British arts patron Edward James requested one. “But to appear like a soft, creased fabric curled around this soft mass and held together by a sort of giant metal spring.” Production stopped in 1982, but since designers and tastemakers like Kelly Wearstler (she loves them all!) and Rodman Primack began clamoring for vintage models, Cassina decided to re-introduce the design earlier this year. “The leather covering was not supposed to be taut,” Scarpa later explained. That was what happened when Tobia and Afra Scarpa received an urgent call from furniture maestro Cesare Cassina in November 1969: Could the Italian architect-son of a famous architect father, Carlo-and his wife come up with a radical new sofa in time for the Cologne trade show in January? The Scarpas came up with Soriana, a hunk of expanding polyurethane wrapped in leather and cinched in the middle with a shiny metal belt. Iconic designs often emerge out of a challenge. These days it’s become a sort of poster child for the Blob Sofa trend.Īfra and Tobia Scarpa’s Soriana seating system in Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg’s Mexico City home. Production stopped in 1979, but as the couch steadily climbed to superstar status in recent years (vintage ones appeared in homes of Beastie Boy Mike D, Athena Calderone, and Chrissy Teigen) B&B Italia decided to put it back into production using only recycled or recyclable materials. In an interview with AD last year, he revealed that to come up with Camaleonda he “Crossed two words: Camaleonte, or chameleon, an extraordinary animal capable of adapting to its environment, and onda, or wave.” The invented word captured the endlessly adaptable nature of the sofa system he designed for B&B Italia in 1970, in which bulbous modules of fabric-covered polyurethane hook together using simple, integrated carabiners to create endless configurations, from sectionals and armchairs to ottomans and daybeds. However, it’s worth committing this piece’s proper name to memory (after all, Bellini designed other sofas). This one is often nicknamed the “Bellini Sofa,” after its Italian creator, Mario Bellini.
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