I trained in architecture, and for the past twenty years I have been developing artworks and managing the production in a contemporary art studio in Berlin — work I still do, and two decades of taking ideas seriously enough to build them. sofen grew alongside it. I didn't look for a spectacular object; I looked for the most familiar one. The cushion is in every home and almost nobody questions it — its front, its back, its role as decoration is pure convention. That made it the right place to begin. sofen's credo is “take nothing as given”.

It came from looking at what a cushion cover actually is: a container. Once you see it that way, the edge stops being an outline and becomes structure you can work with. Shifting the edges inward turns the seam into the diagonal cross that divides each face — the cover stops being a flat square with a decorative front and becomes a small three-dimensional form with its own geometry: no front, no back, surfaces that meet. I started by designing the patterns, and it came together fairly quickly; when technical questions arose, I asked professional tailors for advice. I sewed the first pieces for my own home — that was the brief.

The colours follow the concept of the collection. Edition Shore is drawn from the light at the water’s edge, while its six families — Day, Dawn, Haze, Nude, Salt and Shade — move through that light and atmosphere. Four colours and one structure create 36 combinations, which is precisely the point of the palette: small enough to remain quiet, yet broad enough to compose with. Colour exists as much in the arrangement as it does in the individual piece.

The outer cushion, the pink inner cushion, and the pipings are made with GOTS-certified organic cotton —  The outer twill has enough body to hold the geometry — the form needs a fabric with structure, not drape — and its surface takes the light along the seams, which is where the design lives. I very much believe designers carry a responsibility, and choosing the best sustainable materials is part of it: certified rather than claimed, down to the invisible zipper, whose tape is made from recycled PET bottles.

The pink is the inside. The lining and the zipper pull carry the most deliberate colour in the collection, in the place convention says nobody looks. And it is not a secret: the invisible zipper runs the full diagonal of the cushion and invites you to pull it back. Whoever opens it finds the inside treated as carefully as the outside — that reversal of attention is the point.