ON THE ROCKS OUTDOOR LOUNGE
By Francesco Binfaré, 2024

The humble rock. An enduring inspiration for furniture designers of all kinds throughout history. With a cheeky twist, Italian designer Francesco Binfaré’s On the Rocks sofa for Edra brings this primordial fascination with geological forms into the present — a soft sculpture composed of four hand-molded seating elements in different modular shapes, with two backrests detached from the base, allowing for multiple configurations at once. Binfaré’s design was born of his time in Puglia, in Southern Italy, where he noticed how sunbathers instinctively adapted their bodies to the hard contours of the region’s rocky beaches. He wanted to create a material that could offer the same adaptability while embracing the body in any position. The result was Gellyfoam®, a patented foam technology that Edra developed over On the Rocks’s seven years of prototypes, which provides a responsive, enveloping comfort for the sofa — it does not bounce back like a spring but molds around you, holding its shape.

For Binfaré, who has collaborated with Edra since 1992, the sofa transcends its function. A look at his past work for the company makes this clear. The “Smart Cushions” of Standard (2013) can be molded by hand into different positions. The backrest of Pack (2017) takes the form of a reclining bear. “I believe today, the sofa is one of the most meaningful objects on the domestic scene, which is about the sacredness of life,” he says. In Edra, Binfaré has found the perfect coconspirator. The Tuscany-based company has long pushed the limits of what a modern sofa can be, while never compromising comfort, its essential purpose. “The sofa relates to the cultural aspects of living: conversation, loving, relaxing, watching television. Its complexity is not technological but functional: the sofa is a portrait of contemporary humankind. It is their throne.” And in Binfaré’s portrait, comfort is served on the rocks.