Do you dream of a couch that holds glamour while it holds you, and that always looks perfect even when its been sat in :) ?
I recently had the opportunity to design a custom couch for clients of mine in Johannesburg. It was the soft furnishing component to their newly designed kitchen, which I had been working on for some time before. The mood of the kitchen was inspired by a Parisian apartment aesthetic, with lots of moulding detail, marble and avant guard touches, and the couch was going to form the anchor point for their family of 3 boys at the TV side of the kitchen. So it had a functional statement to perform!
It is a difficult task when you want the family to all be comfortable together and still have good space to relax and lay back but still hold the mood of the rest of the room, which is quite slick and tidy!
I was playing around with a slight semi circle as this would soften the end of the room where it was going and would actually still allow everyone to be together maybe better than an L Shape couch, which seem to have taken over living rooms over the years :)
I have always loved the nostalgic 1960's reference images of sweeping curved couches, and while I naturally gravitate towards the karate chop of scatter cushions on my couch designs, for their volume and softness, these couches are much more structured and upright.
So I embarked on a journey of ergonomics (the space our human form needs for practical comfort). I set aside the all the details I would usually go for and traded this in on clean open form and the discovery was quite surprising.
In a space that was limited on plan to comfortably get around a couch big enough for 5, if I tapered the edges in towards the TV and introduced a curved back I could fit a 3m long foot print couch in, with a radius of almost 1.6m. This is a big couch!
I reduced the depth of the seat space to 650, which is very comfortable still and this allowed me to have a chunky looking back rest to complete the proportion.
The outcome has been great! The couch sits so well in the space with its low key detail and my clients are thrilled with their new setting. I can now officially say that a curve couch is on my own wish list at home! Which one is on yours ... ?
