'Foam' Out Characters

james (U.k.)

[Writing Experiment]

I am writing about the role of material things in design education. For module one, I have chosen to 'Foam' out the characters of two sofas:

Sofas must surely rank as the most deceptive in the spectrum of furniture types. Yes, they have a soft and inviting appearance. Yes, they encourage or even solicit you to collapse into them. Yes, they promise to embrace you in layers of foamy form, yielding to your limbic whims and weight. Yet, all this engaging behaviour conceals a much harder truth. At heart, all sofas are formed of solid, unyielding, and rigid frames. As furniture types go, they are best described as an amalgam of soft and hard, foam and frame, flesh and bone. Be warned – they are no foamy slouches. You are about to meet two sofas quietly going about things in a design school in North England.

Two lime green and grey sofas adopting an L-shape are in a large open-plan studio. These recently reunited siblings – rumours were they came from an unfeasibly large family split up at birth and shipped off to offices, organisations, and warehouses across Europe – were recognisably sofas. However, you wouldn’t find sofas like these in homes. These sofas are just a little bigger (four people can sit comfortably), just a little firmer (like a contemporary mattress in a box) and just a little more durable (contract grade). They aren’t too sofa. Just sofa enough.

The sofas-enough are joined by a rug (leftover from a fashion shoot), a coffee table, and a dusting of cushions, blankets, cacti, publications, and mugs. The ensemble creates a partial, semi-closed, semi-open delineated space within the studio. Imagine visiting Ikea, with all but one room set removed from the ample industrial space. These sofas are a part of the studio, but, at the same time, they are apart from the studio. They have made a room within a room.