It’s officially the Age of Squishy Stuff.
Tim McKeough, in an article published in The New York Times on May 4 (“Like Sweatpants, Squishy Furniture is In,” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/style/furniture-squishy-home-design.html), states that curvy furniture is now popular. Use the link to take a look at some of the most popular pieces out there.
McKeough reports on, “the embrace of bulbous, low-slung, super-squishy furniture that offers all-out comfort. Sofas and chairs that evoke plush 1970s lounges, like Cassina’s Soriana collection and B & B Italia’s Camaleonda modular sofa, are suddenly hot commodities. At the same time, contemporary designers are experimenting with oversize proportions and sink-in plushiness to a level that would have seemed profane to devoted modernists just a few years ago.”
As an environmental psychologist, my response to the rise of curvaceous furniture is, “Of course we’re seeing this now!”
Curving forms in objects are linked in our minds to comfort, pleasure, and relaxation and concepts such as functionality and efficiency are tied to more rectilinear ones. There have been few periods in our modern history when humans have needed more comforting than now. The rise of the squishy aligns with our need to find solace wherever we can in confusing, stressful times, even in the form of our sofas.
We have the same responses to particular sorts of forms wherever we are—brains are brains, after all. Although McKeough focuses on residential spaces, it’s likely that the trend he identifies would be consistent with user responses to items in workplaces. Squishy can, depending on its design, be hard to clean. For example there can be folds and creases in materials for detritus to accumulate, but now it seems, at least, there is less concern about transmission of COVID-19 via surfaces, so cleanability should not preclude the use of curvaceous items in public areas.
Curvy furniture has always seemed more “home-y” and, with the pre-pandemic move toward some residential-type spaces in workplaces, more of it has been finding its way into offices for some time. The use of even more curvaceous furniture in places being developed now will, therefore, make the spaces people are returning to after extended WFH periods seem particularly familiar. And familiarity in this context is great, it helps keep stress levels low and trust levels high.
One caveat – sometimes squishy seats are really comfortable to sink into but hard to rise from. People do learn, and, over time, will start to avoid hard to use furniture. To reap the biggest benefits from squishiness make sure it’s not paired with in-use challenges.
Embrace the squishy! At this time, squishiness can boost wellbeing (and that’s also good for professional performance).
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.