Confluences Sofa

red dot: best of the best
red dot award: product design 2009

Revolutionary puzzle
Please rearrange freely! A puzzle challenges the imagination, because cut up into many tiny pieces at the start, the image only starts to take shape in the mind by putting together all the parts. This principle of rearranging individual parts is perfectly embodied by the Confluences sofa: its parts can be rearranged again and again to form something entirely new. The sofa’s designer, Philippe Nigro, was inspired to this kind of design through pieces of contemporary art, borrowing the principles of addition and the direct stringing together of different volumes to lend the sofa its shape. The result was the idea of a sofa that combines the power of design with the experience and manufacturing expertise of the Ligne Roset company. Without symmetry or any visible regularity, the sofa realises the principle of a puzzle that is endlessly usable and makes it possible to create ever different and surprising combinations. In this way, a number of seats can be brought close and locked together. The seat platforms flow together, overlapping each other as if in a giant puzzle, connected by nuances of shade. Thus also emerging are new possibilities of communication offered by the different configurations of the pieces: love seat “Toi et Moi” (“You and Me”), “Petite Conversation” and “Grande Conversation” or the four-seater with two integrated lounge seats, to name just a few possible sofa combinations. According to the sofa’s designer, in so far as “it attempts to solve an ergonomic problem,” Confluences becomes a plastic and colourful way of playing with countless permutations and sitting positions.