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The World’s Weirdest, Wildest, and Most Wonderful Sofas

Nancy Mitchell
Nancy Mitchell
As a former Senior Writer at Apartment Therapy, Nancy split her time among looking at beautiful pictures, writing about design, and photographing stylish apartments in and around NYC.
published May 20, 2016
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(Image credit: Make:)

Most sofas are well-behaved. They have a back and a seat and legs and maybe arms, and they look, well, like a sofa. These are not those sofas. These sofas (if you can even call a giant cat a sofa) dare to reimagine the very idea of the sofa, pushing ordinary furniture to weird and wild and even wonderful extremes.

Above: It’s always nice to have a cat sit on your lap, but what if the tables were turned and you could curl up in your cat’s lap? This enormous cat couch, created by Belgian design studio Unfold and spotted at Make:, makes that dream possible. You can see more about the process of making it here. (If you decide to DIY this, please send us photos.)

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(Image credit: The Selby)

So this sofa is utterly bizarre and looks a bit like the love child of a Muppet and a Hostess sno ball, but I am not ashamed to say that I would absolutely, 100%, have it in my house if it did not cost almost $20k. Nina Pohl, a Berlin artist whose home was featured on The Selby, has two of these, which make her living room every bit as cozy and delightfully weird as you would imagine.

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(Image credit: Giant Birdnest)
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(Image credit: Giant Birdnest)

If it’s always been your dream to curl up in a giant bird nest, you’re in luck, because there’s a sofa for that too. The appropriately named Giant Birdnest sofa comes in 3 sizes, starting at 3,600 €, with egg cushions that can be customized in a variety of colors. If you (or anyone else you know) has one of these, please send us pictures of it, because we would love to see how this thing looks in situ.

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(Image credit: de Sede)
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(Image credit: de Sede)
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(Image credit: de Sede)

The DS-1025 sofa (lounge chair? sectional?), designed by Ubald Klug and available from De Sede, speaks to both my love of weird sofa-like things and of imaged landscapes. This strangely topographical design can be arranged in several different combinations for your lounging pleasure.

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(Image credit: Hive Modern)

And no roundup of wild and wonderful sofas would be complete without the Living Tower, a delightfully whactacular design by Verner Panton that completely reinvents the sofa and completely dominates my absurdly-priced furniture dreams. It is, at its heart, basically a piece of cat furniture for people, and that to me is delightful. It’s available from Hive Modern for $16,610, and someday it will be mine.

Re-edited from a post originally published 5.20.16-NT

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