When Bachli Furniture launched the Array sofa in Australia last year, the prevailing commentary was about its beauty of form – its pillow-like cushioning that feels soft yet firm to rest upon, and a gentle, curving structure whose modularity allows a standard composition to extend into an undulating form.
There is, however, more to Array than meets the eye. Sitting down with designers Snøhetta, who worked with MDF Italia to design and produce the piece, we quickly learn that ‘good looks’ are a byproduct of the process. There is considerable technical resolve beneath Array’s cushy surface.
Snøhetta is a trans-disciplinary design practice that works across the traditional boundaries of design to deliver projects of all scales and typologies. Headquartered in Norway with regional studios around the world – including in Melbourne – Snøhetta’s expertise reaches into landscape, architecture, interior design, product design and more.
Array began with a conversation between Marius Myking, the director of Snøhetta Product Design, and MDF Italia. There was a shared ambition between both parties to completely rethink the construction of the sofa… “Then MDF Italia gave us an impossible brief,” recalls Matt Irvine, Melbourne-based architect at Snøhetta, who shared the story behind Array during a Saturday Indesign event at Bachli Furniture in Sydney earlier this month.
Rather than respond to MDF Italia with a proposal, Snøhetta suggested a specific approach: “Let’s focus on a highly designed and engineered element or module that can be planned into a larger ensemble or system. In this way we can rethink how a sofa might be produced today – mirco to macro,” Matt recounts.
So, instead of considering the sofa as an object, Snøhetta chose to focus on the detailed design of a smaller piece – one flexible enough to be planned, through a system, into a much larger assemblage. With this at the forefront of their process, Snøhetta focused on production, materials and even installation. And it wasn’t until much later that Array’s beautiful, curving form was arrived at.
Over two years of extensive prototyping and testing, the Snøhetta team explored flexibility and disassembly while reducing material usage. “Through numerous design iterations of a detailed module we tested the overall weight and transportation, and then of course the planning and installation of the sofa itself,” says Matt.
The resulting design of Array is a modular system of just six components which can be configured in countless ways. Interlocking side tables have been developed as accessories to this. This means Array can adapt to changing domestic needs as well as commercial environments such as co-working and hospitality spaces.
“The modules can easily be connected, disconnected and moved, making it comfortable in the usability, as well as using the sofa in different configurations,” says Matt. He also notes the smaller module sizes which makes the Array system easy to integrate into challenging floor plans.
During prototyping, Snøhetta looked to balance comfort and softness with a larger ambition to produce an incredibly light, sustainably produced sofa. The team arrived at injection moulding as the solution, using 100 per cent recycled plastic to produce the modules. As Matt notes, the design smartly concentrates on comfort where it matters most, in the seat and the back, allowing the main structure to remain lightweight.
“Another important point when it comes to sustainability is the lifecycle of a product and its materials. So, for Array we designed it with repair and disassembly in mind, no glue was used in the upholstery – instead a series of elastic ropes that allow you to easily take the sofa apart and repair,” he says.
Bachli Furniture’s director and founder, Nathan Bachli, has been working with Array for a year now. Bachli’s partnership with MDF Italia brought the Array into Nathan’s orbit during the Salone del Mobile around two years ago. He saw the sofa and knew instantly that this was a furniture piece with a much deeper story to it.
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“In Australia people are loving the Array sofa for its flexibility – you can fit it into almost any space. People often think modularity is complicated, but Array makes it easy and highly adaptable to all manner of spaces. And because it’s light, it’s easy to install and move around. You can even unhook the upholstery and refresh it,” says Nathan.
All this functionality exists because Array has been designed from the inside out, rather than form first. Its comfort is the result of an almost scientific enquiry into object composition. The outcome is a sofa that does the hard work for you – aesthetic beauty, responsive design, absolute comfort with circularity and environmental consideration ingrained.
Snøhetta
snohetta.com
Bachli Furniture
bachlifurniture.com.au
Photography
Courtesy of Bachli Furniture and PROJECTSHOTS
