In a master stroke, B&B Italia has re-issued the sculptural 1970 Camaleonda sofa by Mario Bellini and launched ‘The Couch’ a series of insightful design podcasts with Monocle’s David Plaisant that delves into the history of design.
Designers all over the world know the appeal of the Camaleonda sofa. Since it was created by Mario Bellini in 1970, this modular sofa has assumed a place in people’s hearts – cutting across timezones and geographies to remain an iconic and mood-inducing shape.
As a sofa it’s a bit of a contradiction in terms. Structured and languid, soft yet formal, Camaleonda is intended as an architectural statement, but at the same time it feels familiar. Perhaps some of its mystery lies in the year it was designed – 1970 – when the social upheaval of the 1960s was coming to a close and a bold new era was unfolding.
In 1970, the world was at the height of the oil crisis. The Vietnam War was winding down and nations were vying for dominance in both space and nuclear programmes. It was the year Jimmi Hendrix and Janis Joplin both overdosed and the Beatles broke up, and it was a time for new ideas that represented how people lived and how they felt about the world.
In Italy, innovations in furniture design were speeding ahead. Designers like Mario Bellini, Afra and Tobia Scarpa and Gae Aulenti were leading on from the pioneering work of Gio Ponti, Achille Castiglioni and Joe Colombo by giving ordinary everyday objects a life of their own.
As Bellini himself says, Camaleonda was created to fill a void: “At the beginning of the 1970s upholstered furniture for the home had stagnated into the tired traditional stereotypes and radical-provocative elitist forays into the future that, although stimulating, rarely challenged the relationship between the evolution of new patterns of behaviour in the home and the types of furniture available on the market at the time.”
Designer Mario Bellini. Photo © Albert Greenwood.
Born in 1935, Bellini is a pioneer of Italian design. His work in industrial and furniture design is strongly associated with anthropomorphic ideas, designs that show subtle emotion, are sculptural and expressive.
As Bellini recalls: “Camaleonda is a name that I invented in 1970 by mixing two words: the first is the name of an extraordinary animal, the chameleon (camaleonte in Italian), that can adapt to the environment around it and the word ‘onda’, wave, that indicates the curve of the sea and the desert. Both these words describe the shape and function of this sofa.”
An early drawing of the Camaleonda by Mario Bellini, c/o the B&B Italia Archive.
The Camamelonda sofa, photo by Aldo Ballo c/o the B&B Italia archive.
Fifty years later the Camaleonda still oozes with emotion and sex appeal. Reissued this week by B&B Italia's R&D Department, the Camaleonda remains a symbol of the iconic designs that led the way for the evolution of contemporary furniture as we know it today.
Don’t miss the new podcast series from B&B Italia – ‘The Couch’.
Hosted by Monocle’s David Plaisant, the series covers stories about the culture of design with international guests including Mario Bellini, Michael Anastassiades, Antonio Citterio, Piero Lissoni, gallerist and entrepreneur Nina Yashar, and design academic Penny Sparke.
‘The Couch’ interview with Mario Bellini explores the story behind the Camaleonda sofa – it launches on June 5.
Listen to B&B Italia's podcast series B&B Italia 'The Couch'
