2 Devonport Road
United Kingdom
Overview
Henning Stummel Architects have set about reinventing flat pack furniture with their new range showing at the London Design Festival. The key piece of the set is their Nomad Sofa, which uses a single standard piece of birch plywood. No wastage, no nails, no screws, no glue. The collection also features an armchair and coffee table.
Henning Stummel released an evocative press release along with the collection stating ‘I’m not skilled with tools, we don’t have a workshop and getting anything made in London will test patience and budgets.’ The simple, collapsible design rose out of a necessity to navigate these constraints.
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Structure
The sofa was prototyped over a number of years, with the intention of making a simple, durable, sophisticated design, with zero waste and easy assembly. The sofa has just five components, and can be easily assembled with out tools or fasteners in just two minutes. The other added benefit of the flat pack design is the transportation. When disassembled, the Nomad sofa fits easily into any small car.
Similarly to the economy of the birch ply, the customisable leather and velvet upholstery is made from a single roll on fabric. There are two leather choices, and three velvet choices. A partnership between local Cheltenham sofa manufacturers Uptec, has allowed for a lead time of only 4 weeks for a complete sofa.
Stummel’s ten point design ethos that was instilled in the process of designing the Nomad range was as follows
1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally-friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible
Stummel himself, who heads the eponymous architecture firm, is an award winning architect noted for his ‘Tin House’ (shown in the backdrop of the Nomad photos), in which he lives and operates his practice. His influence derives from the Bauhaus ideology of ‘form follows function’, which has clearly flowed into the practical aesthetic and design of this collection.
