Made by folding and gluing layers of industrial felt, Elephant Seating draws conceptual content from many elements of design history. The result is a sofa that is mysterious yet humorous, soft yet dense, and conceptual yet practical.
This sofa is a product of the imagination of a Japanese architect trained in New York. While it does not resemble any familiar chairs, the design process to reach explored many aspects of the history of design, from East to West, from present to past. The choice of material was inspired by works of the late-twentieth-century German artist Josef Beuys, who used felt in many of his conceptual objects and installations. The idea of density as the substance of an object was inspired by late-twentieth-century minimalist works such as those by Carl Andre and Walter De Maria. The idea of folding pays homage to traditional Japanese origami, which is found in objects of various scales and purposes.
This sofa was named Elephant Seating because of its resemblance to an elephant in terms of its colour, texture, and ear-like elements that act as armrests. However, the obsession with the elephant is a subtext that makes reference to the history of design. It calls to mind works such as the Elephant Stool by Sori Yanagi (designed in 1954), or the Eames Elephant by Charles and Ray Eames (designed in 1945).
Formally, this sofa is bilaterally symmetrical. Its appearance from the rear is equally as important as its frontal and side appearance. How the view of the sofa changes as one looks at it from different angles is part of its intended design effect, introducing the notion of time into design elements.
Because of its materiality, the sofa is very soft all over. Yet because of its geometry, density, and structure, it is very stable. Since the sofa is soft, it can be shipped without the risk of being damaged. No assembly is required by the user. The seat area is structurally stabilised by the vertical folding and layering of the felt sheets. The ear-like pieces hanging from the armrests provide lateral stability. They are folded out from the seating. There is a piece of a plywood embedded in each armrest to maintain the shape.
This prototype was made by the architect himself in his studio. Because it involves nothing more than a dense layering of fabric, folded and glued in calculated ways, it does not require elaborate tools or specialised factory processes to manufacture. Each felt sheet needs to be cut to a precise shape, but the process of folding and gluing them can be done relatively easily and quickly in a space about the size of a bedroom.
This sofa was designed intentionally to expose its construction technique as the form. Here, the act of folding synthesises the technological construction as well as the cultural construction of a sofa. |
