The Bevel Sofa by Sara Hayat is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 Bronze A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
BronzeFurniture· 2022
The Bevel Sofa
by Sara Hayat
Client: Sara Hayat Design
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #133559The Design
About The Bevel Sofa
The Bevel sofa is a cross-over of reduced chic and casual elegance, that combines style with rich velvet or suede upholstery to evoke a warm and inviting atmosphere for your living space. Available in a myriad of colors and textures to suit your needs, this sleek, low-profile design emphasizes minimalist styles with bold geometric shapes. The piece is designed to be beautifully distinctive yet functional. From the width of the cushions to the angle of the backrest, everything is intentionally orchestrated to make the clients feel warm, relaxed and held when using this piece.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
The Bevel Sofa is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. The Bevel Sofa is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. The Bevel Sofa splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
When I would model my designs, the big question I would ask myself is, ‘does it pass the Aesthetic Force test?’
Dr. Sarah Lewis describes it as the power of art, or music, or a piece of writing that moves you, "to leave us changed - stunned, dazzled, knocked out. It can quicken the pulse and make us gasp in astonishment. Its importance is its animating trait - not what it is but what it does to those who behold it in all its forms."
With the Bevel, i wanted a chic, modern sofa that visually conveyed how I wanted people to feel when interacting with my products. I wanted them to feel held. By using taking the main element that makes a couch comfortable - the cushion, we made that the focal point of the whole piece. Despite having wooden frames inside, it looks like an inviting and comfortable piece from all angles.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
Visually, I wanted my designs to grab attention - to be able to anchor you in the present even if for a moment. Things that are whimsical and playful have a way of doing just that. My Mom, who tests and oversees the manufacturing of my pieces, called really excited about the cushioning we were trying to pick out for the Bevel Sofa, and to give context, i mustve made her try a dozen combination of cushioning! So she calls all excited and she says, the cushioning is extremely soft and comfortable, and just when you feel you're about to just sink down, its firm so you feel like you're being held!
That was it! That feeling of being totally relaxed, feeling held, feeling warm in your posture, allowing us to connect with people we are with. Its combining form and function to not only serve as visual affirmations, nudging us to rise above but also fostering a sense of belonging, forging a connections with people we are with and discovering their magic.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
I want to bring this design to life and would love to see it in peoples home. It is great to entertainment space, office and even a den. I love its versatility and would want to take it mainstream.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The sofa is made from several cushions linked together and placed on a wooden platform. The cushions are made from special gel foam and high density foam, along with wooden frames and spring to give the pillows their one of a kind shape. The details added to the sofa like the belt and the legs supporting the platform, adds a unique flair to the design. From the angles of the backrest to the width of each cushion, the piece is intentionally designed to make anyone using the piece to feel warm, relaxed and to feel like they're being held.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Dimensions (mm) of the Sofa:
W3352.8 x D1016 x H685.8
Cushion size: W558.8 x D558.8
Seat: H406.4 - Tags
- Sofa, comfort, accent sofa, modern furniture, art
- Production Technology
- After sketching several iterations on paper, with a help of an architect, we made a 3D model of the item. We iterated further several times before finalizing the design. This saved us a lot of material, time and money if we were physically making all the iterations. Using CAD, we fashioned the cushions such so it was provide maximum comfort. We then added the accents like the wooden mahogany frame and the leather belts. By visualizing it on the computer, we could make sure that it would be physically possible to achieve the look we wanted. After that it was sent to the fabricators to bring it to life.
- Design Challenge
- The hardest part was trying to come up with a way for the bevel aspect of it to take shape and be functional at the same time. The other challenge was to link all the cushions together seamlessly.
- Research
- We played around with multiple different combination of foams like high density foams, gel foams, foams infused with gel, feathered down cushions, silicon layers on top of high density foams, before coming up with the most comfortable and functional combination. After that, we had to experiment and figure out how to get the perfect beveled edges and overall roundedness of the shape. After several different experiments, we lined the cushions with some rubber to keep it from losing shape.
- Inspiration
- The inspiration for this piece was actually from another piece of furniture i had designs. We wanted a tetris type sofa where different pieces come together to make a warm and comfortable sofa. While working with different shapes and figuring out how we wanted to present this idea, we settled on the beveled edges for each cushion, which inspired the rest of the piece too.
- Project Duration
- Started in Feb 2021 in Denver and Lahore and Finished in Nov 2021 in Denver and Lahore.
- Operation Flow
- It is a sofa used to rest and sit.
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Sara Hayat, 2021
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