Stream of Light is a conceptual sofa by Olivia Lee and Alienor de Chambrier made from four separate items of furniture wrapped and bound in silk, wool and horse hair. Created as a response to a challenge set by Vitra for the D&AD Student Awards 2008 competition, the piece utilizes a variety of materials and methods of weaving to join originally disparate seating...
“Our approach started with a re-examination of the sofa and it’s being defined as a piece of upholstered furniture,” explains Lee. “We took the idea of upholstery and started to play with other kinds of traditional craft techniques such as crochet and knit - exploring ways of making comfort part of structure as well. We also began collecting a huge array of unusual materials which we felt would build on the uniqueness and eccentricity of the piece."
For those interested, the original brief from Vitra follows:
"Design a sofa inspired by the new Vitra Edition collection that is unencumbered by commercial constraints and pushes the boundaries of innovative furniture design.
Key drives:
* Unique
* Conceptual
* Experimental
* Displaying craftsmanship
* Innovative in form or/and function
* Use of new or unusual materials
* Breaking the mould, defying convention
Your design is aimed at collectors of art. Each Vitra Edition is strictly limited (usually to 12) and individually numbered and registered. As each piece in the range demands a high value in the market of anywhere between £8,000 and £130,000, your design should reflect this positioning."
Sourced via Dezeen and DesignBoom
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Comments (49)
no thanks.
Looks like a dyspeptic whale threw up in a sidewalk cafe...
C'mon students - get a grip.
I like it, but not as a sofa.
Thats really beautiful, actually.
...kinda creepy to me...
haunting and breathtaking. wonderful
pretty novelty. warm and fuzzy frivolity. nice.
It is. . . not a sofa? Either way I want to dust it.
I can see the merit as a conceptual piece, but I wouldn't want to plunk down on it.
It meets all the key drives
Love the concept...not totally impressed with the execution.
I like the way the yarn is used to fill in the gabs and bind the chair legs together, but even conceptual furniture or furniture as art needs to retain some of its basic functions, and this looks incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. If you're not perched on the stool you've got balls of horse hair to condend with.
I love this! Beautiful and imaginative.
It looks like mold or algae or something is slowly killing those chairs.
"It looks like mold or algae or something is slowly killing those chairs."
That is part of what is so nice about it. I see cob webs but instead of being a gross material, it is actually beautiful and comfortable material. The way it is bound and at times follow the chair's structure but also folds on top of itself and moves across the chairs is great.
With conceptual or very artsy furniture, I can usually understand how someone (even if not myself) might like it... this, I just find wholly unappealing and rather ugly, no matter how I try to look at it. Absolutely awful.
No! This is garbage.
£130,000????? SERIOUSLY? For THAT?
It looks like something from an Anthropologie display window that's kind of pretty and unique next to new line of bulky sweater dresses meant to make you look like an avant-guard, pregnant sheep.
Really beautiful? The Emperor's new clothes spring to mind.
Untie the chairs and use the fibers to tie the designers up, so they can never get to a sketchpad again!
I really think that I would like this if it were just a bit less lumpy. Particularly, I want that second chair to have the seat fully covered so that it could be sat in without getting s sciatica from the lumps.
I love looking at it. It's really evocative. I'm not sure I'd love curling up on it. I like it as art, not as instrument of vegetation.
Id like to see what my cat would do to it.
I agree with nazrd in terms of liking the concept behind the sofa. While there are things about this sofa that I like, overall I don't think the execution lived up to the Idea.
from afar it looks like a bunch of chairs stuck together with globs of great stuff. i'm not liking this.
This is why you should never knit on crystal meth.
haha you guys are funny.
Since when does every designer piece look like the ultimate in comfort?
Have you seen Starck's W.W. Stool? Or how about Rietveld's work. Or perhaps even an Eames molded chair. If I wanted comfort I'd go out and buy a Lazy-E-Boy for less money.
Idustrial design can also be looked at as a way to create a sculptural art object out of an everyday item we all use. Would this "sofa" be the most comfortable thing in the world? No. But it is quite beautiful and engaging to look at (if you don't think its aesthetically pleasing then that is certainly your opinion and I'm not trying to argue that fact). But don't pretend you're all of a sudden thinking about comfort as your number one priority when you're shopping for designer pieces.
Lastly, they didn't say the winning piece would sell for £130,000... but it could. And I don't think that is an unreasonable price. A simple Warhol silkscreen can sell for 5 times that amount. I couldn't even take a guess at the amount of time it took to make that sofa. I think £130,000 would be a fair price given the limited edition nature, time it took to create, and the price for the design.
No.
"Next!..."
That's just awful... It could possibly have looked nice, but it's just too haphazard. It looks like garbage to me. I think the real test would be to leave it on the curb and see if anyone picks it up... I'm willing to bet no.
Eames molded chairs are very comfortable, by the way.
"Eames molded chairs are very comfortable, by the way."
I have a rocker - I know. But for $550 you could get something MUCH more comfortable with a ton of fabric and padding. But that isn't what someone is interested in when they go to buy an Eames which is the same principle that applies to the sofa above.
Plain and simple: this is one of the ugliest things I have ever seen. Conceptual or not.
This is supposed to be a couch? Looks like chairs covered in bird poop. Big bird poop. Awful!
Looks like someone's decided to film yet another remake of Great Expectations, starring Gwenyth Paltrow as Miss Havisham...
I understand that this is a conceptual piece (and the concept sounds great), I just don't see the aesthetic fully fleshed out in the physical sofa. The materials listed - silk, wool, and horse hair - are applied so haphazardly with no "wow" factor whatsoever. The randomness needs to be applied with a bit more precision and skill for it to create a cohesivevision. They took the idea and maybe made it 30% of the way there - this looks like the rough draft.
Uggg.. I hate comments that only reflect the person's narrow concept of a thing.
No - none of us is every going to own this sofa. None of us is ever going to own a Duchamp or a Picasso. That's not the POINT of these pieces. The point is to challenge the concept of a thing, an object, or a concept.
Does anyone think that Ron Arad's furniture is meant to be practical? No. It's an expression of an idea. Same as the Vitra piece above.
It seems that many commenters are reacting to an awareness of constructs of 'sofa' and whether this object meets the functional requirements to be so called. I would agree that this is in no way a 'sofa.' The transgression of reasonable taxonomy typically causes confusion, resentment, and offence.
I wonder how different the reaction would have been were the same object presented as a 'sculpture' or 'installation,' rather than in the framework of a purported home furnishing, which evokes more utilitarian schema. It's an interesting piece of art and craft, but the categorization makes about as much sense as calling the Mona Lisa a 'pencil holder.'
for an emperor to sit on naked.
I wish I'd gotten here earlier so I could write "let's see how many people miss the whole 'this is a conceptual piece' thing. I see lots and lots!
Let me get this straight: The "key drives" essentially say, "make something that doesn't fit any definition of a sofa, but then call it a sofa." Lame.
It's easy to "explore" and "push boundaries" when the only direction or purpose is to do something new. By that definition, anything that *doesn't work* for a sofa qualifies.
put it in a gallery, yes.
put it in a house, no.
As a designer/artist, I'd love to see this piece up close and examine the intracacies of the weaving and application techniques. Up close, it looks complex and highly evolved. I respect that this is the artist's answer to the challenge of "design a sofa". How many people would have thought that far outside the box? Kudos to her for being innovative.
That being said, I find the piece truly hideous. I know good art when I see it. I just don't have to like said "good art".
This looks like something that I could've made when I was 8 with my cat and my dogs would watch from the sidelines chearing us on.
It's NOT a sofa.
It's four chairs strung together.
And VERY unattractively strung together.
Hideous crap.
i think it is beautiful and haunting. But not a sofa. I like my sofas cushy and comfy so I can sleep on it!
It does make me want to get more creative with my chairs.
I was ready to rip this apart as well - but when I read the Vitra brief, I realized the real request was to build a piece of art in the form of a sofa, not a sofa that you would sit on and watch TV. On that level, it does work. It must have taken the designers an incredible leap of faith to trust that Vitra was actually looking for what they said they were looking for. More often than not, clients might say they want art, but in reality they want something far more familiar, comfortable, and presentable. Good for the designers that they saw their vision through in a very pure way.
That looks...gross. Like it's the cousin of the green fuzzy stuff in the tupperware at the back of a fridge.
Yuck!
Charlenemcbride -- I know what a conceptual piece is. Conceptual or not, sofa or otherwise, this is ugly and looks haphazard. "Hey, I know, let's string 4 chairs together with some white stuff."
It's ugly. It's awkward. It looks like very little thought went into it.
Charlenemcbride, please tell us "ignorant" folk what is so great about this conceptual piece.