Can an appropriately functional piece of furniture also be fun? How can the colourful aesthetics of a spirited seater add a sense of illusion by defying scale and rules? All these questions are creatively answered with the first ever collaborative collection by Spanish furniture brand Sancal and the Netherlands-based design studio Raw Colors. Pioneering the vibrant spirit as observed in both the brand and the studio, the collection comprises an assortment of vivid and eye-catching sofa designs named Link and Loop. “From a single gesture, a shape evolves that equally unites curved and straight segments. Link and Loop are visually connected by the cylinder. The essential geometry allows the overall volume to be soft and tactile in its appearance. Hard corners cannot be found”, states Daniera ter Haar and Christoph Brach, Founders of studio Raw Color.
The collaborative project emerged during the initial days of the Covid-19 pandemic with an optimistic belief in reviving social gatherings. However, after a two-year-long hiatus, as the pandemic comes to a close in Europe, the stimulating collection is finally up for grabs.
Both the sofas succeed in imparting visual poetry that is not only minimal but also highly functional and while illusion is only a state of mind, the sensational play of lights, shadows, shapes, colours and volumes surely make the collectible furniture design stand out. The designers from Eindhoven and brand manufacturers subtly played along the lines of soft and curvy geometries that made Loop and Link sofas pose an aesthetic appeal while defying the scale that most furniture pieces can be related to.
The Link Sofa: a fluffy chain you can sit on
Creating a seating solution as a piece of art challenges all conventional approaches. For the Link sofa, the multidisciplinary designers drew inspiration from the sinuous and solid curved of an ordinary chain. Just as each of the connecting links of any metal chain, the sofa is designed with plushy links, intertwined with each other, scaled up and draped in colourful upholstery. The result propels illusionism in design by looking like a solid, enlarged chain but possessing the softness of a well-cushioned seating.
The sculptural Link pouffes are the result of ideas concerning alternative furnishing solutions. By expelling all formal limitations, their approach is indisputably free, culminating in an anarchic sitting. In terms of finishes, the Linkpieces are available in a carefully curated range of six plain colours, two multicolour versions: multitone bold and multitone pastel, and also the specially designed sprinkles fabric by Kvadratーa Danish design company that Raw Color often collaborates with. The texture of the sprinkles fabric was curated by another Danish designer Bertjan Pot who lives and works in the Netherlands.
The Loop Sofa: a sinuous loop of coloured comfort
Raw Color aspires to develop novel and pleasurable ways of sitting. The Loop soft seating range not only comes in various sizes but also in a variety of distinctive finishes that creatively break the circuit. The Loop ‘Designer's Edition’ is available in four different variations of the Planum material, which was also developed by this studio for the Danish textile manufacturer Kvadrat. Each variant, like a mosaic, blends three various colours of the same colour, experimenting with warm and cool coloured hues based on the colour scheme.
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