Featured product: Repose Sofa
Designer: OKHA
Project: South Villa, Clifton Terraces
Architecture: SAOTA
Interior Design: ARRCC
Photo Credits: Niel Vosloo
Text OKHA
Repose Sofa came about via an interior design project, a coastal villa for which OKHA created bespoke furniture. From the outset, Creative Director Adam Court knew he wanted the main seating to be a highly sculpted form that would hold and anchor the space and be the design lead for the interior. The open plan living space had complicated proportions that prohibited a natural circulation of movement; drawing an organic shape on the floor plan was the best way to solve these problems.
The curvature of Repose is, therefore, a product of this fluid and adaptable approach to finding a design solution by engaging with context and utilising restrictive parameters to find a new aesthetic. Once the Repose shape was established, the rest of the design process was intuitive and guided by this initial free form, organic shape. The curves and sensual lines of the sofa thus directed the evolution of the interior design concept of the project.
Creating a three-dimensional form out of such a non-systematic, non-linear and irregular organic form was a complex process. OKHA constructed the wooden frame as a piece of sculpture, resolving the engineering as they progressed; an enormous amount of time was spent in the factory guiding and evolving the construction from the timber stages through to the extensive foam shaping and modelling.
Creative Director Adam Court says that “Creating the Repose Sofa was a very gratifying process for me as a designer as I come from a fine art background and sculpture was one of my passions, given that and the fact that I have no formal design training or CAD skills (I draw everything by hand and build models), the end result was very satisfying (as we all know it is not always). The concept that had for some time been germinating in my head, had managed to be transmitted from a mental concept, through to drawings and then workshopped into a full-scale physical form without losing any of its original intent.
Aside from its physical, visual features, which I find sensual, feminine and very human, the sofa is well conceived in terms of ergonomics and practicality; it comes in five different size formats with attached and detached ottomans making it a pliable sofa system as well as a beautifully sculpted, landscape form.
I believe the greatest success of the design is how it immediately provokes an emotional and visceral response from the viewer, I believe that all good design must function on multiple levels and responding emotively, in a human to human way, which is one of the design principles I try and build into my work.”
A sensual, serene, surreal landscape sculpted into seating design. With feminine contours and seductive lines, the Repose sofa stretches out like a languid form in recline. Adam describes how he was “drawing something freehand, loose and fluid and not thinking about the end result and where it was heading, the shape created itself, then I coerced into something you rest and recline on. That way of drawing is intuitive and without any predestination, when an interesting form appears you seize it and work with it”
“Repose is a truly unique and beautiful sofa. OKHA has designed it to be viewed from every elevation to enhance the distinct shape which makes it instantly iconic and perfectly complements our design philosophy. This is why we wanted to exclusively represent it.” – STUDIOTWENTYSEVEN
