The design collective Raw Nerve have created what we think must be the sweetest and slowest sofa in the world. Life is Suite is their loving revival of a run-down sofa found discarded in a back alley of London, destined for the dump. Members of the collective rescued the dilapidated piece of furniture and brought it into their studio, where over time they began to contemplate its former life...

They imagined the impressions that the sofa may have absorbed, the stories it had heard, secrets whispered, urgent young lovers languishing in its folds. They imagined that it might have served as a child's castle and envisioned a collection of lost objects buried in its depths. They saw the sofa not as an inanimate object, but as a living, breathing thing with its own life and its own story to tell.

The designers set to reviving that rich history, re-upholstering and imprinting upon it the imagined tales of its life so far. To unravel the secrets of its past, one must interact with the sofa, examining every intimate detail, lifting its cushions and listening intently to soft sounds emitting from deep within.

Raw Nerve have taken this sofa beyond being a mere functional object to being a site of discovery, infused with layers of meaning that challenge and delight those who come to sit on it. In so doing, the designers raise the experiential potential of the objects and environments that surround us, as well as the possibility of their future lives outside the landfill.

Raw Nerve web >

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