Since its debut in 1987, the Italian manufacturer edra has built an international reputation for producing innovative and unconventional designs. Take the Campana brothers’ Boa for example, it’s simply a 90-metre tube that’s been transformed into a sofa by twisting and knotting it like some fancy bread. edra, like many other manufacturers is blurring the boundaries between furniture and art, producing incredibly sculptural items such as Studio 65’s iconic Bocca – a sofa shaped like a pair of lips – and Mario Canazi and Roberto Semprini’s Tatlin sofa, a very direct homage to the Russian’s Monument of the Third Communist International (a miniaturised monument sits in the middle of the sofa which spins out following the direction of its curves).
And when the Campana brothers describe their Favela chair as an explosion frozen in midair they seem to be doing a passable impression of Cornelia Parker talking about Dark Matter (1991). But the secret behind edra’s success is not that they manage to upgrade furniture to the status of artworks, rather that they translate poetic concepts into functional and usable objects. Inga Sempè’s Brosse, containers covered by a screen of stiff propylene industrial brushes that grip anything you stick into them is ultimately as practical as it is wierd. And with GreenwichVillage now acting as edra’s agents in the UK and Ireland that practical wierdness looks set to spread.
MR