Leader Of The Pack

For three decades, the leading Italian furniture brand EDRA has been collaborating with innovative and avant-garde designers to create unorthodox, eye-catching furniture destined for unique and intriguing spaces.

- Catherine Belbin

During the recent Salone del Mobile, identity toured the ever-popular EDRA stand and discovered that the firm’s penchant for the unusual and the innovative, and research and development, remains a part of its DNA.

For more than 30 years the firm, based near Pisa, has been working with designers who are equally curious as to how to reinvent basic furniture, be it a chair or sofa. With Humberto and Fernando Campana, the company experimented with recycled materials to create the iconic Favela chairs.

EDRA’s exclusive smart cushion technology includes a mechanism inserted in the arm and backrests, allowing them to be tilted to the desired position with the minimum of pressure.

“This way the island sofa becomes, with its soft architecture, the heart of the house,” claims the company.

Created in collaboration with Francesco Binfaré, the smart cushion technology was indeed ahead of its time and allowed for more flexible seating configurations – akin to contemporary living, where people often work on laptops and interact through other media while relaxing on their sofa… The smart technology has been used in other models, including the Standard, Essential and Absolu.

In 2004 the firm registered a patent for Gellyfoam, a special material created through the mixing of different foams to create a new foam that offers increased softness and versatility. Again, the company showed its interest in interpreting the evolution of our seating requirements, in keeping with changing lifestyle habits.