Furniture brand Natuzzi Italia has unveiled a sofa designed by Bjarke Ingels Group. The Colle Sofa, available online, draws inspiration from Natuzzi Italia’s early iconic designs, “known for their inviting, hospitable style that captures the essence of Mediterranean living,” as the company describes it.
The piece is part of the wider Natuzzi Italia project titled ‘The Circle of Harmony,’ which has included a collaboration with dozens of renowned architects, artists, and designers over the past four years. Described by the company as “a physical and mental place that welcomes the most intimate and social moments by hosting quality time with ourselves and others,” the Colle Sofa features a wide selection of fabric and leather coverings.
“Rooted in Natuzzi Italia's core values — Mediterranean flair, design, harmony, Italian character, innovation, comfort, and sustainability — the 2023 iteration of this philosophy, featuring the Colle Sofa, delves into the world of comfort, an integral element of Natuzzi's style and a cornerstone of its DNA,” the company adds.
The sofa is one of several architecturally-relevant furniture products recently featured in our editorial. At the beginning of the year, we covered Steelcase’s reinterpretation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Headquarters furniture, while 2022 saw us take a look at some of our favorite architect-designed furniture and home goods products at Salone del Mobile.
Earlier in 2022, we took a look inside “the world’s most sustainable furniture factory,” also designed by BIG, while our ongoing Job Highlights series explored the relationship between furniture, product design, and architecture.
8 Comments
2x the amount of material on the ends for no reason. neat.
Also 2x the amount for the back and seat curl. Oh, and it's incredibly ugly
2x the marketing
I hit the link. If you want to know how much it costs, you have to request a quote. Others sofas start at $3-4k.
BIG’s architecture emerges out of a careful analysis of how contemporary life constantly evolves and changes. BIG believes that by hitting the fertile overlap between pragmatic and utopia, architects can find the freedom to change the surface of our planet, to better fit contemporary life forms.
From the Natuzzi page.
https://www.natuzzi.com/us/en/shop/natuzzi-italia/na-new-collection/colle-3268-s
Query:
How many life forms can afford $many-k for a sofa?
BIG's language (see above) has this virtue, and only this virtue: if I tried to parody it, I don't think I could ever come up with anything more vapid and more ridiculous.
work must be slow. Also, butt ugly sofa, reminded me of this
The thing I find most remarkable about the BIG sofa is how unremarkable it is. It is not much different at all from the other sofas at Natuzzi, or from any contemporary furniture we've seen the last decades. The same could be said for his architecture—it makes no significant esthetic or cultural statement and does almost nothing to distinguish itself from the bland to so-so to OK modernist work we've seen and gotten used to—and are putting behind us.
Furniture from architects past may have been expensive and certainly is expensive in reproduction. It may not even be comfortable. But it made a statement that struck then and still intrigues. Something has been envisioned. They became icons of our culture.
Ah, but it's *BIG*, and it's changing the world!
So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.
You know the story.
Credit to BIG as a business - seems like they just inked a deal with NASA to design some new moon colonies as well. They are the SOM of our time, a firm that speaks to the zeitgeist and out-maneuvered their competitors to define the architectural aesthetics of a social media age.
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