Chesterfield sofas have become an inspiration for many designers. After Patricia Urguiola for B&B Italia and her ‘Tufty Time’ modular sofas comes Maarten De Ceulaer with his exciting ‘Mutation Series’.

‘The pieces in this series look like they weren’t made by hands, but have grown to their present form organically. They might be the result of a mutation in cells, or the result of a chemical or nuclear reaction. Perhaps it’s a virus or bacteria that have grown dramatically out of scale. The Mutation pieces make you look at furniture in a different way. Maybe one day we would be able to grow a piece of furniture like we breed or clone an animal, and manipulate its shape like a bonsai tree.
On the other hand, the project can be seen as an experimental review of classic furniture upholstery. It reminds us of the famous and iconic deep buttoned (Chesterfield) sofas, interpreted in a highly contemporary and sculptural way. Instead of upholstering springs and foam with leather or textile, these pieces are created by carefully composing patterns with cut-offs of foam spheres of various sizes, and applying them onto a structure. In the end the entire piece gets coated, with a durable polyurethane or tactile velvet-like finish. It is hardly impossible to ever recreate such a specific pattern, so every piece is completely unique.’s

ARCHITECT: Maarten De Ceulaer, Brussels, Belgium. DESCRIPTION: Furniture. DATE: 2011. No part of this web site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of Morfae and the copyright owner.