Sofa features mixed fabrics and textures

Republic of Fritz Hansen™, headquartered in Alerød, Denmark, brings Danish values of sustainability and timeless design to its furnishings. Award-winning Spanish artist-designer Jaime Hayón brings a colorful, extroverted style to his work. The collaboration of the two became an embrace—the FAVN™ (a Danish word for embrace), a curving sofa launched in April during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2011 exhibition in Milan, Italy.

“I wanted the sofa to be based on a shell … hard on the outside, soft and welcoming on the inside,” says Hayón. He also sought a mix of fabrics and textures. The base and back shells, made from hard polyurethane foam with glass fiber reinforcement, are covered with one fabric. The seat and back cushion, made from cold-cured, highly elastic polyurethane foam that embraces, is covered in another fabric. Decorative pillows of low-resilience polyurethane foam are covered with a third fabric. (The sofa is also available in a single fabric version.) Hayón chose seven different textured upholstery fabrics by Danish company Kvadrat A/S to finish the FAVN’s organic embrace.