Form Us With Love and Samsung Unveil "Sofa of the Future"
Designed to be moved around the house as you switch screens.
Multidisciplinary design studio Form Us With Love has been tasked by Samsung to recreate a sofa that would better suit future behaviors around the home. Named “Shift”, the design takes into consideration how we may need our furniture to adapt to our future needs – specifically accommodating the changing ways in which we watch TV.
Shift was unveiled during this year’s Stockholm Design Week, and is the result of a speculative research brief posed by Samsung to Form Us With Love. The studio – known for furniture, spatial, and product design – was tasked with imagining how a sofa may look and perform 10 to 15 years from now. “The starting point of this project has been based on the fact that if the sofa were to work for as many needs and occasions as we use our TV for, wouldn’t the entire viewing experience be enhanced?,” says Magnus Per Nilsson, Nordic Product Manager at Samsung.
In response, their prototype design has been crafted with the utmost flexibility in mind. When the TV first became commonplace in the home, it was often confined to one room. But now, screen usage happens all over the house. With that in mind, the hammock-like Shift is intentionally agile and can be moved around the home easily. Its webbed structure molds to the shape of the sitter, allowing for a number of body postures and positions.
From a sustainability standpoint, the studio wanted to strip back the number of materials used as much as possible. As such, Shift negates the need for traditional sofa components – such as foam padding – and instead offers comfort through the webbed design. “The only thing we know about the future is that we know nothing about the future,” says John Löfgren, Co-founder of Form Us With Love. “We, therefore, need to create something that will be flexible in placement, living arrangements, ways of use, and in what material options we have in the future.”
Shift is currently on show at Stockholm Design Week, which is taking place across the Swedish city until February 11. Elsewhere, Norwegian brand Vestre is presenting its first-ever collaboration with designer Daniel Rybakken.
