Customised Comfort - Bernhardt Design’s Mellow Sofa

Bernhardt Design’s Mellow sofa has an ingenious twist: the user can customise it to enhance their own levels of comfort. Indeed, in a world where we seek an increasingly individualised experience, the Mellow sofa can be personally tailored to our relaxation and postural preferences. Bernhardt Design is renowned for its highly skilled craftsmanship and is a leader in promoting the future of design. Based in the United States, the company collaborates with some of the leading lights and newest talents in the American and European design worlds, including French designer Océane Delain. In 2014, Delain graduated from Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Crèation Industrielle where she studied how people coexist and interact with objects. This focus informed the concept of the Mellow sofa, which responds to the notion that comfort is not standard; rather it changes with each individual. Receiving a government grant, Delain transformed her concept into a prototype and presented it at the VIA Design exhibition at Maison&Objet in 2015. With its clear design vision Bernhardt Design recognised both the talent of the designer and innovation of the seating solution, and put the Mellow sofa into production, debuting the showstopper at the 2015 International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City to much acclaim. The great innovation of the Mellow sofa is that users can customise the seating surface to suit their personal comfort criteria. A network of nylon cords pierce the sofa, run through cleats in the wooden base and connect to a series of buttons on the platform frame. By modifying the tension on the cords – tightening or loosening them – users can adjust the density, configuration and ultimately comfort of the sofa, creating a softer or firmer feel and reshaping the surface for a more or less dimpled look. The Mellow sofa’s smooth and curving form is made of layers of different density foams, including memory foam. This means that while its appearance may morph under tension – contracting or expanding as the buttons are tightened or loosened – it will still return to its original form. Denser foam in the arms and back is used to hold the shape of the sofa while more flexible foams in the seat are used in conjunction with the adjustment system. The Mellow is also covered with a durable 3D fabric that stretches in all directions and enables it to be upholstered with only one continuous seam. Mellow is in two sizes and in four finish and fabric options – red or black fabric with a solid maple base, and black or taupe fabric with a black base – and the colour of the cords, buttons and cleats coordinates with the base colour. The Mellow sofa has already picked up a number of awards including NeoCon 2016’s innovation in seating. It also won Best Seating and Best of the Show at NYCxDesign in 2016, as well as a 2015 Red Dot Design Award, and Editors Award for Best Seating at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in 2015. KE-ZU is proud to be the exclusive Australian importer of Bernhardt Design furniture. The Mellow sofa, plus the full range of Bernhardt Design’s diverse and contemporary collection, is available at KE-ZU’s Alexandria showroom and online at www.kezu.com.