RODA Basket modular outdoor sofa and tables

Modular outdoor sofa

Squares that add up

Basket seats rest on four bases: about 35 inches square, 53 by 35 inches, 79 by 35 inches, and a deep 53 inch square. Each base takes one of several backs, which is why the piece list runs long. There are center units with no arm, ends with one arm on the right or left, chaises and a complete three-seater. Lined up or turned at a corner, they make anything from a compact sofa to a lounge that wraps a coffee table.

The frame is tubular stainless steel with a powder coat, in smoke with gray belts or milk with sand belts. The back is a close weave of polyester belts and the seat is Batyline, a coated mesh that stays taut and lets water drain away. With hydro-draining cushions on top, the whole sofa dries fast after rain, and the powder coat shields the steel from sun and damp.

Guillaumier drew Basket around the meeting of vertical and horizontal lines. The belts wrap the steel tubes and set up a grid of flat surfaces, with no curve anywhere in the frame. Modules without a back turn into benches or wide poufs, handy along a wall or at the edge of a pool where a full sofa back would block the view.

The two coffee tables are about 35 inches square and 53 by 35 inches, low at roughly 12 inches, with tops in Luna or Farsena stone or Carrara marble. Stone copes with sun and spills and suits other RODA collections as easily as Basket. As Italian outdoor furniture goes, this is a system to plan on paper first, so a sketch of the space with its measurements helps us price the right modules.

Belts on steel, mesh seats, backs only where needed.

Designer

Gordon Guillaumier

Gordon Guillaumier, who founded his Milan studio in 2002 and sits on RODA's artistic direction team, kept Basket strictly rectilinear so its modules can be regrouped without losing their shape.

More about Gordon GuillaumierMore about Gordon Guillaumier

Also listed under Italian outdoor sofas.