The Monocle Minute
On Design

Whether it’s a plush, new settee or a vintage leather number, couches speak volumes about our personalities and lifestyles. This week we stretch out on the sofas of leading creatives and find peace on an archival lounger from South African furniture-maker Kallenbach. Plus: we ask industrial designer Ini Archibong about her experimental lacquerware and visit a new civic oasis on the Memphis riverfront (pictured). First, Carlota Rebelo shares some lessons in building better from San Francisco’s Urban Transformation Summit.

In many ways, the sofa is your defining piece of furniture. Often the largest item in a living room, it can dictate everything from your selection of other pieces to your behaviour. For Monocle’s November issue, we visited the homes of leading creatives to hear about their settees. Here are three highlights.

Llisa Demetrios, chief curator, Petaluma
Eames sofa by Herman Miller
Llisa Demetrios lives a short drive from the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity in California’s Bay Area, where she is curator of a collection dedicated to the work of her grandparents, Charles and Ray Eames. “This sofa is my place to pause,” she says of the black leather Eames design in her home. It was the last project that her grandparents worked on together and went into production in 1984, five years after Charles’s death. “It holds you but you also have to sink in a little bit. You don’t perch on a truly great sofa.”

Marcio Kogan, architect, São Paulo
Horizonte sofa by Minotti
The Brazilian architect’s couch of choice is the Horizonte seating system, which he developed with Italian furniture company Minotti in 2022. “In my studio, we design everything,” says Kogan, who founded Studio MK27 in the 1970s. “One day, Minotti called us and asked us whether we could create a line of furniture with the same identity as our architecture.” That conversation resulted in a partnership that has been ongoing since Kogan’s first collection was released in 2018.

Farshid Moussavi, architect, London
Osaka sofa by La Cividina
“My living room is tall and long so I can choose pieces that wouldn’t work in a smaller space,” says Iranian-born British architect Farshid Moussavi. The room calls for a sofa that matches its scale – and her five-metre-long version of Pierre Paulin’s customisable Osaka sofa does just that. “It has metal brackets on the base so you can shape and curve it. I was interested in the idea that I could change the look of the piece over time.”

For more views on the sofa, featuring designers such as Fien Muller & Hannes van Severen, Nifemi Marcus-Bello and Daniel Libeskind, pick up a copy ofMonocle’s November issue, which is on newsstands now.

Design studio Scape and architecture practice Studio Gang have transformed a 12.5-hectare section of the Memphis riverfront into a new public space. Named after an African-American river worker who risked his life to save 32 people from a capsized steamboat in 1925, Tom Lee Park boasts more than 1,000 new trees and native plants, ecologically revitalising the area. The parkland is organised into zones that mimic the Mississippi’s sediment flows. Here you’ll find a river-themed playground, sports and recreation grounds, timber structures and picnic areas.

“Our job was to design a park that aspires to meet Tom Lee’s spirit of generosity,” says Kate Orff, Scape’s founder. “Communities in Memphis are so vibrant. We wanted to make a park that enables that grit, love and creativity to come together in one place.”
scapestudio.com; studiogang.com

Switzerland-based Nigerian-American industrial designer Ini Archibong is celebrated for work that taps into heritage and craft traditions. As part of Craft x Tech, a cross-cultural initiative that pairs craftspeople from Japan’s Tohoku region with international creators, Archibong recently collaborated with artisans who specialise in tsugaru nuri, a type of layered lacquerware. The result is Artifact #VII, a playful, egg-shaped piece that emits a sound when you hover your hand over it.

Spirituality is an important part of your practice. Why?
At the start, the journey to becoming a designer was a spiritual mission. It changed my perspective about what I was here to do. For better or for worse, being a designer is more than a job. I don’t necessarily design from a place of practicality. I make functional things but the way that they come about is intuitive.

Where does your interest in world-building come from?
Fantasy, comics, movies, cartoons. As a child, I went to church every Sunday and read every day. I loved books by CS Lewis and L Frank Baum. When I read them, I felt as though I was in a different world. It was my escape.

How does this translate to the project with the Tohoku craftspeople?
It was an amazing project to work on. The lacquerware’s layers and texture give it this amazing pattern. I love design that’s chaotic and feels organic. The piece also emits sound, reacting to your presence. It’s part of a wider series of artefacts that fit into what I call a “mythology of the children of the diaspora”.

For more from designers such as Ini Archibong, tune in to ‘Monocle on Design’ on Monocle Radio.

Brands often talk up their commitment to social causes but few have a track record like South African furniture-maker Kallenbach. The now-defunct company was founded by Hermann Kallenbach, a South African architect whose professional achievements are today overshadowed by his association with Mahatma Gandhi. After meeting at a vegetarian restaurant in the early 1900s, the two became a lifelong pair. The businessman donated land near Johannesburg for Gandhi to found the Tolstoy Farm ashram and the two lived together for extended periods, working as farmers and carpenters.

Kallenbach’s commitment to satyagraha – Gandhi’s philosophy of peaceful resistance – didn’t prevent him from running a successful architecture and design business. This kiaat polo armchair was conceived by John Tabraham, a designer popular for his pieces made in the Danish modern style but crafted from South African wood. Though it was manufactured after Kallenbach’s death, the lounger reflects his legacy: it might be a tad more luxurious than Gandhi would have approved of but, in its own way, it still promotes peace and quiet meditation.

Japanese furniture brand Koyori has kicked off its collaboration with Cypriot designer Michael Anastassiades with the Makuri lounge chair. The minimalist perch consists of a wooden frame with two carefully warped pieces of plywood that comfortably cradle its user – and it’s complemented by a matching footstool. “It’s an example of the process that I follow whenever I’m designing,” says Anastassiades. “I remove the excess information and retain only the bare essentials. If the products have a strong presence, it’s thanks to that reduction process.”

The piece, which also comes in a tastefully upholstered version, is certainly striking. Its name, Makuri, comes from the Japanese phrase for a phenomenon in which soft wind rolls gusts of snow into spirals, similar to those made in the process of shaving wood. “Nothing can ever compete with nature,” says Anastassides. “It’s always an inspiration.”
koyori-jp.com

When French newspaper Le Figaro published the Manifesto of Futurism in 1909, its author, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, couldn’t have possibly imagined the global movement that it would spawn. Creatives across the world embraced its ethos, which celebrated speed, machinery and industry. These are themes explored in futurBella, a new exhibition in Rome curated by Raffaele Curi and backed by Fondazione Alda Fendi – Esperimenti.

Spread across the six floors of hotel-cum-gallery space Rhinoceros is a showcase of futurist works including the playful graphics and bottles of Campari Soda, which were designed by Fortunato Depero in 1932. You’ll also spot the machine-like puppets created for Depero’s Balli Plastici, a performance that aimed to show the potential of technology to replace humans. Visitors are treated to more recent interpretations of the movement too, with a tribute to the Oscar-winning costumes that Holly Waddington designed for Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, inspired by the aesthetics of futurists such as André Courrèges.

‘futurBella’ is on show at Rhinoceros until 30 November, 2024
rhinocerosroma.com