3-Seater Sofa, Italy

3-Seater sofa ‘Strips’, created in 1972 by Italian architect Cini Boeri and produced by the Italian brand Arflex. The design of this blue 3-seater is remarkable thanks to the removable, padded cover that wraps all around the sofa, creating a soft form and very inviting piece of furniture. The frame made out of metal and poplar plywood was combined with soft polyurethane padding, providing excellent seating comfort. If you open up the zipper on the seating and fold the backrest tot he back, you will discover a comfortable sleepover bed for one. This sofa is Arflex most popular product, winner of the Compasso d’Oro and can be found in museums around the world. This blue sofa has a few very small lighter spots as shown in the pictures, but the overall condition is very good.


About the designer:

Cini Boeri (1924–2020) was a pioneering Italian architect and designer, celebrated for her bold, human-centered approach to furniture and architectural design. In the male-dominated world of postwar Italian design, she carved out her own unique position as a major female figure in the 20th century design history. She studied architecture at the world famous Politecnico university in the city where she was born.

After graduating in 1951 she worked with notable architect Gio Ponti and later she started a professional partnership with Marco Zanuso, who was also a major figure in Italian design.‘Functionality, comfort and adaptability’ were focus points in Boeri’s designs. She expressed also a big interest in how people actually lived in and interacted with spaces. She specifically made furniture that could be adapted to people’s changing life stiles and she underlined sustainability as an important element of her modular designs. She wanted to make life simpler and more flexible and her designs more human-centered.

Apart from her award winning Strips sofa she designed for Arflex in 1972, Boeri scored also with designs like the Bobo Lounge chair (1967), an early use of molded polyurethane foam and the Ghost chair, a fully transparant glass chair she made with Tomu Katayanagi in 1987.She designed not only furniture but also houses, showrooms and full interiors.


Her architectural style balanced modernism with warmth, functionality, and a sensitivity. Boeri became a true female leader in design, advocating for both design innovation and greater inclusion of women in architecture and design professions.Her work can be admired in major museums, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Triennale di Milano.kkl