The Diatomic Sofa is composed of two independently adjustable seats mounted on a shared welded-steel base. Each seat is capable of freely sliding along the length of the base, and each can be rotated in place through a full 360°. The two seats can be magnetically combined together to form a 72” wide sofa, in either an aligned or opposed orientation. Otherwise, they are free atoms, relatively independent of one another.

The Diatomic Sofa deliberately avoids the conventional, reductive approach characterized by so-called “functionalist” design. Rather, it is more appropriately considered as a barometer of dysfunction, insofar as it strives not only to satisfy the conventional behavior associated with this type of furniture, but to allow for misbehavior as well.

It recognizes that the conventional sofa embodies and reinforces potentially erroneous assumptions about the way that individuals desire to situate themselves within space, particularly within a social setting. Specifically, by ensuring physical proximity and identical orientation, the form of the conventional sofa acts as a unifying framework that imparts to its users an often unwarranted sense of intimacy and agreement.

The typical sofa therefore ignores the possibility that two individuals might like to be “alone together” in a space, to pursue independent activities, to orient themselves differently within the same space, or to modulate their physical and social relationship to one another. A conventional sofa must therefore be misused or underused in order to satisfy those desires of its users that fall outside its limited set of social assumptions.

In order to remain open to this broader range of (mis)use, the Diatomic Sofa renders the conventional sofa-form as just one of many possible configurations available to its users. The unifying steel base that provides the means for the seats to be recombined and aligned also provides a legible datum from which their separation and misalignment can be discerned. Consequently, the ultimate arrangement of the seats is always read relative to their potential adjacency, which confers upon their separation an obvious and poignant sense of intentionality.