Both the sofa and the bed cannot do without the support of feet

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If you browse the internet as much as we do, you’ve probably seen a lot of weird and memorable sofas over the past few years. (The most iconic sofas will be etched in your memory forever.) Want to know the name of that sofa that looks like a bag of buns? Want to know the story behind the Jabba’s Hut sofa that’s become a worldwide furniture meme? Or maybe you’re wondering about the connection between that cartoon lips sofa and surrealist artist Salvador Dali? Don’t worry, we’ve got all the answers for you. Here are 14 iconic sofas you need to know to impress your Togo-obsessed friends, and where to buy them.
In 1930, a little-known American architect named Philip Johnson asked a budding German architect named Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to design his New York City apartment. Mies was a busy man: he had just completed the Barcelona Pavilion, finished the Villa Tugendhat, and been appointed director of the Bauhaus. But he took the commission, which was limited to interior decoration, as an opportunity to promote some of his recently completed furniture designs in the United States. As it turned out, the project produced another Mies signature piece, one as practical in name as it was in form: the sofa. This beautifully shaped piece—with a hand-stitched cowhide seat and cylindrical upholstered cushion resting on an African mahogany platform with tubular Steel Legs—was a natural fit for the small apartment.
But it was Johnson’s next project, the famous Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, completed in 1949, that brought the sofa the most attention. Here, the piece’s understated form allowed for a clear view through the windows to the unobstructed views beyond. Needless to say, it quickly became a sought-after item. Expensive and complex to make, the sofas were produced in very small batches in Berlin until 1964, when Knoll took over production (a new sofa costs about $14,000). In fact, it was Knoll, not Mies, who named the sofa the “Barcelona” in 1987 because of its striking resemblance to the Barcelona chair and stool designed for the 1929 Spanish International Exposition.
The Marshmallow Sofa, designed by George Nelson for Herman Miller, sits in the nursery of a Malibu Hills home designed by Michael Boyd.
Is there anything more adorable than a marshmallow sofa? The story goes that this wonderful idea was conceived by American industrial designer George Nelson in the 1950s. At the time, a plastics manufacturer told him that their company could stamp disks of the material that would take on a smooth vinyl coating when heated. In theory, they could create a simple Metal frame and then attach 18 “marshmallows” to it. But it wasn’t that simple. Ultimately, the manufacturer couldn’t fill the order, and each cushion had to be upholstered one at a time, making the sofa design much more complex than the original concept. Nevertheless, Herman Miller signed a contract to produce the sofa in 1955. After nine years of sluggish sales, they discontinued the product that had become a pop icon. Thirty years later, Vitra and Herman Miller reintroduced the sofa (starting at $5,285).
French designer Michel Ducaroy got the inspiration for his now-popular sofa collection while brushing his teeth one morning. He explained that the aluminum toothpaste tube he designed “folds up like a chimney, closed at both ends.” It was this simple observation that inspired his most iconic design, the Togo Sofa. Manufactured and sold by Ligne Roset, the Togo Sofa is a soft, curly, floor-hugging sofa. Fans include interior designer Kelly Wearstler, musician Lenny Kravitz, actor Colman Domingo, and fashion icon Clara Cornet, who says her faux-leather sofa is both stylish and kid-friendly. You can buy it through Ligne Roset or, most recently, Design Within Reach, starting at $1,930.
This sofa is often called the “Bellini sofa,” after its Italian creator Mario Bellini. But it’s worth remembering the sofa’s official name (Bellini designed other sofas, after all). In an interview with AD last year, he said that to create Camaleonda, he “combined two words: Camaleonte, which means chameleon, an unusual animal that can adapt to its environment; and onda, which means wave.” The self-invented word reflects the endless adaptability of the sofa system he designed for B&B Italia in 1970, in which spherical modules were made of fabric-covered polyurethane and connected together with simple built-in carabiners to create endless combinations, from modular sofas and armchairs to poufs and chaise longues. The sofa was discontinued in 1979, but in recent years, as it has become a star product (it has appeared in the homes of Beastie Boy Mike D, Athena Calderone and Chrissy Teigen), B&B Italia decided to restart production using only recycled or recyclable materials. Today, it has become the representative of the “Blob Sofa” trend.
In 1973, Swiss designer Ubald Klug designed a sofa called the Terrazza, inspired by terraced landscapes. The New Yorker called it “strange.” The modular sofa, produced by de Sede, consists of seven gradient leather cushions per unit, placed on a rectangular base. As Kelly Wearstler notes, the base is infinitely extendable: “You can have a sofa that’s 50 feet long or 60 feet long if you want.” She’s one of many contemporary designers who have embraced the “strange” sofa. Other designers include Adam Charlap Hyman, Yves Behar, and Mick Jagger, who was photographed lounging on the Terrazza. It’s available through de Sede, starting at $12,170.
You know that sofa that looks like several pieces of gum? The sofa that most people now jokingly call the “Chiclet Sofa” was designed by Herman Miller in-house designer Ray Wilkes in 1976 as the Wilkes Modular Sofa Group. Wilkes used a new machine to inject foam into a mold to create a round sofa, which was then upholstered in Herman Miller’s two-way stretch fabric and assembled in a modular fashion to form a chair or three-seater sofa. After a recent surge in popularity of the design, Herman Miller has reintroduced the sofa, starting at $2,295, and it comes with USB charging ports and new Maharam-branded upholstery options.
Exactly 50 years ago, Hans Hopfer designed the Lounge Sofa for Roche Bobois. The modular seating system consists of three simple upholstered elements that can be combined or stacked into an infinite number of possible configurations: an armchair, a sofa, a bed, or even – if you prefer – an entire living room. A simple set of rectangular modules, the sofa quickly earned the more catchy nickname “Mahjong Sofa,” a reference to the Chinese game of mahjong. Over the years, the sofa is still sold by Roche Bobois and has appeared in countless homes (we recently spotted one in Bretman Rock’s Open Door magazine), with its cushions reupholstered in fabrics from brands like Kenzo, Missoni Home, and Jean Paul Gaultier.
Florence Knoll often said that she only designed furniture when “the job called for a piece of furniture and there wasn’t one.” These pieces were “placeholders that no one else wanted to make.” Such was the case with this sofa, designed in 1954, which instantly became an iconic and symbolic piece of her work with its exposed steel frame and legs and super-custom upright seat, a kind of homage to her mentor Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Although it has been copied countless times, few have managed to match the perfect proportions and craftsmanship of the original. Available on dwr.com from $9,723.
Rodman Primack of AD100 RP Miller and his husband Rudy Weissenberg in their Mexico City home featuring Soriana furniture designed by Tobia and Afra Scarpa.
Famous designs are often born from a challenge. In November 1969, Tobia and Afra Scarpa received an urgent call from furniture maker Cesare Cassina: Could the Italian architect (Carlo’s father was also a famous architect) and his wife design a completely new sofa for the Cologne trade fair in January? The Scarpas came up with the Soriana sofa, a block of polyurethane foam wrapped in leather and held together in the middle by a shiny metal strip. “The leather covering shouldn’t be taut,” Scarpa later explained. “Instead, it should look like soft, pleated fabric folded around a soft mass, held in place by a kind of giant metal spring.” The sofa went out of production in 1982, but as designers and tastemakers like Kelly Wearstler (she loves these sofas!) and Rodman Primark began calling for a retro look, Cassina decided to bring the design back earlier this year.
Imagine designing a sofa around your art collection. That’s what inspired Vladimir Kagan to create perhaps his most famous piece, the Serpentine Sofa. It was the 1950s, and his clients collected Abstract Expressionist paintings, which revealed a gap in the market that the Manhattan-based furniture designer saw: a sofa for viewing art. “We don’t all need to sit like birds on telephone wires,” he said. To fill that need, he designed the undulating sofa with casters for easy movement. Today, a standard 11-foot sofa is available through Holly Hunt, but most of Kagan’s clients (like the Manhattan celebrities who inspired him) prefer to have it custom-made.
Okay, this is a bit of a tricky question. The story begins with a 1935 watercolour by Salvador Dalí in which the surrealist artist depicted the actress Mae West’s mouth as a sofa – a piece of furniture so provocative that the British arts patron Edward James also asked him to design one. At the same time that Dalí was creating these pieces for James, across the Channel, the Parisian interior designer Jean-Michel Frank was making his own piece for the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli – a sofa in the shape of lips. The idea was revisited several times throughout the 1930s, each time slightly different, and it became the inspiration for the Italian designer Franco Audrito of Studio 65, who had just been commissioned, in 1970, to design a fitness centre in Milan. Audrito teamed up with foam furniture innovator Gufram to create the now iconic cartoon sofa called the Marilyn (now Bocca), after the red-lipped star and lipstick-loving gym owner Marilyn Garroschi. Gufram still makes the sofa in a variety of colors, including one with a lip ring!
In 1968, Italian architect Cini Boeri began experimenting with seating made from a simple molded polyurethane material that could be wrapped in removable covers, like her children’s sleeping bags. The so-called Strips collection, named for its easy-to-remove design, was as practical as ever: “The shell could be removed, washed, replaced, put back on, and then zipped up like a polyurethane dress,” she wrote in 1974. These modular chairs, sofas, and beds, which look like building blocks dressed in down jackets, officially debuted in 1971 from Italian manufacturer Arflex (they still make Strips today, with sofas starting at $8,150). Today, as the ’70s modular seating trend continues to grow, design minds around the world are pledging their allegiance. Celebrity architect Frank Gehry has a few pieces of Strips in his Santa Monica home, and AD100 talent Charles de Lisle used some green Strips in his renovation of the Sea Ranch Lodge in California. You can buy one new on Arflex starting at $8,150, or if you're lucky, you can find one used on 1stDibs for a little less.
In the late 1960s, France was struggling to revive its ailing design industry when it came up with a brilliant idea: a vibrant reimagining of President Georges Pompidou’s apartments at the Élysée Palace by a young French talent named Pierre Paulin. Paulin’s otherworldly rooms featured a few standout pieces: sculptural sofas and armchairs molded from strips of wood wrapped in foam and leather. While the seats were certainly a hit with visiting dignitaries, the collection known to most as Élysées didn’t gain a cult following until it surfaced at New York’s Demisch Danant gallery in the early 2000s. “People knew about Paulin, but they didn’t know about the French pieces,” explains Suzanne Demisch. “Even then, they were hard to find.” Couture designer Nicolas Ghesquière snapped up the first pieces to hit the market. While these rare originals, which were briefly produced by French manufacturer Alpha but ceased production around 1973, are hard to find, New York's Ralph Pucci Gallery is now offering a reissued version. Meanwhile, for a more affordable option, check out Paulin's version of the Pumpkin, which he created in 2007 for French manufacturer Ligne Roset.
If Kanye West has made one thing clear, it’s his love for Jean Royère, particularly the French designer’s now-famous Polar Bear sofa. (He told AD that he sold his Maybach to afford it.) What’s the story behind this beloved living room? In 1947, while renovating his mother’s Paris apartment, Royère installed a circular sofa called the Boule, covered in soft velvet that would later inspire the design’s charming nickname, Ours Polaire—“White Bear.” When Royère unveiled it at the Art et Industrie fair “La Résidence Française,” all of Paris was stunned. But the orders soon started pouring in. The French foreign minister’s office in Helsinki ordered two chairs; the Shah of Iran also bought several for the dining room and bar at his daughter Shahnaz’s home in Tehran.
Patrick Seguin, a French art dealer who co-published two books on Royère with Jacques Lacoste, estimates that only about 150 Polar Bear pieces exist. Their rarity is reflected in their skyrocketing prices: Today, a set (two armchairs and a sofa) costs about $1 million; the sofa alone costs $600,000. Yet since the early 2000s, the designs have found their way into the living rooms of celebrities, from Larry Gagosian to Ellen DeGeneres. Today, thanks to the newly formed Maison Royère, the secondary market is no longer the only option. Reviewed reprints can be ordered to order.
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