Contemporary sofa designs come in many shapes, sizes, fabrics, designs, and structures, each depending on what particular stylistic idiom the buyer happens to be looking for. Since the design layouts of living and office structures vary so drastically between styles, from art deco to Bauhaus to 70s retro, the style of couch that best suits a room depends on synchronizing that couchs style with that of its surroundings. Determining the best style for a given setting is the ideal first step toward determining a particular style of contemporary sofa.

A contemporary sofa should reinforce the stylistic motif that is being established within a certain space. For example, if the one has outfitted a room with symmetrical and structurally economical pieces from the Bauhaus movement, then it would serve the buyer to find a contemporary sofa with a simple construct, such as slender steel legs and single-color leather cushions. The biggest mistake frequently made is to purchase an attractive and modern piece that, although lovely on its own, conflicts with the established motif of the room.

Contemporary Sofa Designs, Past and Future
A new trend that develops with every changing cultural movement is that of the retro aesthetic. Retro refers to borrowing a style from a cultural movement in retrograde, for example, using furniture from the 70s in an apartment styles toward the 90s. Indeed, sofa designers in the 70s were already borrowing, albeit in an ironic sense, from the designs of the late 1940s and 50s.

The typical style of 70s design that is most borrowed in the world of retro furniture is the use of abstract angles and unusual materials. Couches, chairs, tables, and lighting fixtures of the time all employed what was considered to be a futuristic approach, resulting in intentionally oblong and misshapen furniture. The contemporary sofa designs from this period are some of the most visually arresting and intriguing, which is why the developing trend of retro furniture comes as no surprise to those familiar with the trends of the past.

Isamu Noguchi was a Japanese-American artist and designer whose philosophical interest in the combination of Eastern and Western ideals led to a unique and admired body of work. Well-renown as an artist and sculptor through the world, his designs helped redefine the way people imagined landscape and architecture, particularly their gardens and fountains. This imagination also led to the invention of the Noguchi coffee table, one of the most famous works of modern furniture in existence.

Isamu Noguchi was born to an American father and a Japanese mother in Los Angeles, California in 1904. Although he was born Isamu Gilmour, he changed his name to his mothers moniker Noguchi as he grew older and became more in touch with the culture and philosophical ideals of his Japanese heritage. He attended Columbia University, and as he learned to paint and sculpt in several downtown New York City studios, he became comfortable combining the sensibilities of his Eastern and Western backgrounds.

Isamu Noguchi and His Artistic Accomplishments
This East-meets-West mentality brought him instant notoriety among artistic circles in the community, and he soon earned a grant to study sculpting in Paris. There, among the elite designers in the field, he honed his vision and began to develop the measured and pacifying models of structure that permeated his work from then on. After traveling to Mexico to work on a mural with the famed painter Diego Rivera, he was commissioned to create the opening gates to the Associated Press building in New York City.

His designs for furniture and the home were widely acknowledged for their ability to instill a sense of peace and harmony. This derived largely from his influences and studies of Japanese gardens and general architectural principles. The Isamu Noguchi coffee table is a particularly notable piece, for its use of pleasant rounded edges and sloping framework.

Harry Bertoia was an Italian-born designer and sculptor who immigrated to Canada early after discovering his own artistic talent. Obsessed with work in metals and bronze, his vision soon brought him to Detroit, where he would produce the majority of his most significant designs. His work presented a unique perspective on the relationship between rigidity and comfort, and resulted in unique furniture designs.

One of Harry Bertoias most significant contributions to the art world was that of his sound sculptures, which he classified under the term sonambient. These were metal and iron structures that, when stroked, brushed, or otherwise manipulated, created unique and pure musical tones. Though often different in pitch and consistency, Harry Bertoia appreciated the natural inherent beauty of these tones forged from steel.

Harry Bertoia and the Philosophy of Design
This concept of natural harmony coming from the manipulation or harsh steel and metals was a constant theme in his designs, from sculpture to furniture. He continually experimented with the balance between the inherent mathematical and structural reason of solid elements such as bronze, and the abstract power of the subjective imagination. This balance produced his unique chair designs, which are still popular to this day.

The Harry Bertoia chair strikes this unique balance of effective, strong workmanship and surprising comfort and aesthetic appeal. The wire metal framework provides a firm and supportive structure, while the seat platform is soft and perched at a pleasing angle from the ground. This unique piece of furniture is perhaps the best known by this intriguing artist and designer.

Modern sofa designs come from many sources, and change in popularity as easily as the term modern itself is continually redefined. Many of the modern sofa designs used today are actually taken from the design innovators that have been prominent since the early 1900s. Even as contemporary trends have changed, their concepts and structural and artistic ideals have maintained throughout the years and have not waned a bit in significance or popularity.

The designers of the Bauhaus movement were the first to gain prominence in the world of modern furniture design. These men, including Le Corbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and others changed the way people viewed furniture with their vision of furniture as a personal and ideological statement rather than merely a fixture for the home. The Mies Van Der Rohe couch is still considered one of the finest ever made, for artistic and practical reasons.

Modern Sofa Types for All Purposes
The reason that these modern sofa designs appealed so strongly to the masses was that their conception was not rooted merely in self-indulgent artistic principle alone, as so many trends have been in the past. Indeed, these works were the genesis of an entirely new way of thinking about living space in relation to our lives and human energy. These designers believed in a stylized way of designing the home, from walls to furniture and beyond, and a means of increasing the comfort and efficiency of a persons entire life.

The practical application of these ideals results in a lean but efficient, and altogether comfortable, form of furniture. The modern sofas designed by the Bauhaus often featured little more than simple leather cushions and metal framing. However lean the design, however, the architectural foundation allowed for such a relatively simple form to carry a significant load and provide comfort without sacrificing the ideological integrity of the designer.

George Nelson was one of the most influential of all of the American-born designers of the twentieth century. By the time he rose to prominence in the first half of the century, he had already studied abroad with masters of the International Style, such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. He returned America a decided and strict modernist, and left behind the classical designs he had studied at Yale to forge a path into the future of design.

Before designing furniture professionally, he served on the boards of several architectural publications and architectural societies. Some early innovations in home construction, such as the idea of using wall space inside the house as potential storage areas, brought him interest from construction and consulting companies, and he soon found himself working for another prominent architect of the time, Herman Miller. It was in this stage in his career that he began to expand his ideology of space into more personal creations, and his unique creations began to reveal themselves to him.

George Nelson and His Creations
The first George Nelson design that came to prominence was his Ball Clock, a typical clock that used small rods to connect atom-shaped orbs to the body of the clock. While the minimalist ingenuity of the piece reminds one of his International Style influences, the use of bold colors and open space forces George Nelson into an entirely different category of designer. His style was decidedly more American in its ambition and energy of form.

Other popular designs by George Nelson include his Marshmallow Couch, several other forms of clocks, and several different tables of varying sizes and forms. Again, even as the economy of structure is reminiscent of Le Corbusier, his use of color, of asymmetry, and of circular design give the pieces a uniquely American feel. It can be said that the designs of George Miller are more modern perhaps than those of the more widely-acknowledged modern designers, such as the Bauhaus.