The Lightweight, Recycled Works of Malafor’s Blow Sofa

Fresh off the three-day weekend, it’s always nice to begin a shortened working week with a brand new word. Today, the vocabulary builder happens to be “dunnage,” a word that to all intents and purposes would seem to lie midway between “dun” and “tunnage.” And indeed it does—as both the sound and the meaning is especially apropos of the movement metaphor wrought by Malafor’s Blow Sofa.

Blow Sofa. Designed and Manufactured by Malafor.

The Blow Sofa is Recycled, Recyclable, and Affordable

All three of the words alluded to above have a maritime signification, and there’s definitely something sea-worthy about Blow—a collapsible, portable, lightweight piece constructed from thin metal poles and “100% recycled paper dunnage bags.”

Blow Sofa. Designed and Manufactured by Malafor.

The item ships as a flat pack parcel, as all that’s required to bring it to fully-inflated and fully-supportive life is a pair of decent lungs and the accompanying rubber straps to tie the works together—to batten down the hatches, as it were.

Blow Sofa. Designed and Manufactured by Malafor.

That’s not to say that the Blow Sofa forecasts threatening weather, in either the literal or figurative sense. To the contrary (and owing to their origin as packing material to protect a ship’s contents during transport) the dunnage bags are ultra-durable and exceptionally tough, containing two layers of paper and a plastic liner throughout the interior. And should one of them encounter some mishap or another, the bags are inexpensive and easy to replace.

Via Mbetwoart.

About the Manufacturer: Design-Build firm Malafor hails from Poland, which fact might bias them toward a certain regionalism, but—as they say—“Our products are stateless. They prove to the world.” Pieces like the intriguing Trunks and the utilitarian Pipeline Bookcase have recently proved to the world at the Polish Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, the Seoul Design Fair, and the Salone Satellite 2010 in Milan.

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