Quirky sofas: 5 design solutions to give your living a bolder touch

Check out this design sofa built on round and all-embracing forms: here’s Jacques, a work by Milanese architect and art director Rodolfo Dordoni for Italian leading furniture brand, Minotti. The project kicks off from a common design seed that turns a vaguely retro style into a symbol of 100% contemporary style, for the most striking visual impact. Elegant stitching – a synonym with the company’s sartorial skills and high level of expertise achieved over the years as a consummate expression of masterful craftsmanship – emphasizes the curved silhouette of the Jacques sofas, available with both leather o fabric upholstery. A sophisticated aesthetic language that is expressed in soft shapes, compact proportions and keen details – like the metal base with Light Bronze finish running along the frame’s edges –, this modern two-seater sofa is an actual invitation to dialogue and meditation.

Innovation is the name for the game at Knoll International, whose fresh new re-edition of Piero Lissoni’s Avio Sofa is a truly contemporary and versatile sofa component system. Recently reinterpreted with the introduction of asymmetrical elements and a cutting-edge patented mechanism, Avio is marked by a lightweight supporting structure: a steel truss fitted with ‘fingers’ to support seats, backrests, tables, thus able to give rise to an almost endless number of benches, two-seaters, three-seaters, chaise longues and tabletops. Avio’s key strength lives within the system, hidden from view: a mechanism activated with a simple gesture that rotates the end seating element by 18° to make resting, reading and conversation even more comfortable. Avio also evolved by incorporating asymmetry: the corner version goes beyond the idea of the right angle, and offers a scalene triangle of innovative and generous proportions that serves as an end element to form compositions of irregular beauty.

Great customisation and unparalleled aesthetic sensitivity intertwine together in Let it be, a family of modern leather sofas designed by Ludovico + Roberto Palomba for Poltrona Frau. The collection’s philosophy is implicit in its name. A famous song by the Beatles, it is evocative of a period of newfound freedom from all types of formalism and convention.The project also embraces and reinterprets the time-honoured Italian concept of the Roman triclinium, where people lay down, ate, talked and lazed about. A modular system open to the most comfortable of configurations, Let it be is an actual invitation to relax, which can be completed according to taste with shelves and storage units that expand its functions. In a few words, this is an authentic island of wellbeing equipped for any requirements. The foot, unexpectedly set back from the corner, enhances the sensation that the seats are floating in space, and along with a few refined details – like the exposed leather and saddle leather stitching echoing the processing of fine saddles and harnesses –, make the sofa an unmatchably precious and unique must-have.

Those of you who are passionate about fashion & design contaminations, please meet Palmer, a modular sofa collection designed by Toan Nguyen for Fendi Casa: an artful blend of pure geometry, rare textiles, great comfort and absolute charme, the sofa is itself the result of a drastic reduction both structurally and visually. By defying the laws of gravity, this one-piece seat seems suspended, miraculously held by perimeter supports of the backrest, while the legs that bear the whole sofa mislead to fragility, as vegetal architecture. The lightness of Palmer sofa mainly echoes the spirit of Maison Fendi: indeed, a shared obsession with reduction relieved Palmer of the traditional and obsolete aspects of opulence. With the focus being on modularity, endless configurations are allowed, alongside the possibility to play with the chromatic shades – ranging from hazelnut brown to greyish and mink – that characterize the brand’s couture collections.

One more curvy, yet not merely round sofa: on behalf of Désirée, a high-end brand controlled by Gruppo Euromobil specialising in sofas, armchairs, bed frames, home accessories and rugs, Canadian designer Jai Jalan has created Avì Es. An elegant, contemporary sofa that brings back memories and features cocooning lines and a minimalist base in matt bronze-coloured metal. Avì Es is the result of pairing a gently curving, wraparound structure with soft seat and back cushions that encourage pleasant conversation.