Knoll is no stranger to curves. From the organic silhouette of Eero Saarinen’s Tulip and Womb chairs to the rounded steel frame of Mies van der Rohe’s MR seat, the furniture brand’s historic catalogue is filled with designs that invite people to curl up and relax. This April at Salone del Mobile, Knoll introduced the latest extension to this portfolio — and as with the aforementioned classics, it arrives courtesy of a prominent voice in the architecture industry. Now available in North America, Knoll’s Biboni sofa showcases the vision of L.A. duo Johnston Marklee, founded in 1998 by Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee.

“If I look at Eero Saarinen’s Womb Chair, what makes it truly outstanding is the way that it sculpts the negative space around it,” says Jonathan Olivares, Knoll’s creative director. “Rather than sculpting space with architecture, he sculpts space with an object in a room. I see a lot of parallels between Saarinens work and Johnston Marklee’s.”

Back in 2014, the Californian husband-and-wife team earned a spot on our September issue cover with Vault House, a beachfront home that they designed in Oxnard, California. The project resembles, in a sense, a block of Swiss cheese — with arched windows and cut-outs giving the building fun, sculptural presence, yet also carrying plenty of light into the narrow footprint. Similarly, the home’s two-metre-high piles create the impression that the structure is hovering (a feeling accentuated by the U.F.O.-like glow emanating out from under it), but also function as a practical tsunami safeguard.

Olivares first worked with Johnston Marklee back in 2015, when the trio collaborated on the Columbus Biennial. They followed that up with another joint effort, Room for a Daybed, at the Kortrijk Interiur Biennial in 2016, and then with furniture for Dropbox’s headquarters in 2019. “When I started as Knoll’s design director, Sharon and Mark were some of the first architects I called to collaborate with Knoll,” says Olivares. “They are at the leading edge of architecture in the United States, and have developed a language that is entirely their own.”

Sure enough, the firm’s first piece of furniture for Knoll boasts its signature balance of charm and rigour. Much like the studio’s Vault House project, Biboni is a playful, rounded design that appears to float above the ground — and also boasts a high degree of underlying rigour. Process images from Johnston Marklee’s office feature a collection of Michelin Man models — and it is easy to see how that tire mascot served as inspiration for the sofa’s puffy, scalloped forms. In fact, the sofa gets its name from an amalgamation of “Bibendum” (the official name of the Michelin Man) and “macaroni,” which served as another bulbous source of inspiration.

Yet Johnston stresses that these curves are as ergonomic as they are expressive. “There’s an elegance in how the sofa relates to the body,” she says. Dozens of maquettes created throughout the design process — many of them resembling styrofoam packing peanuts — offer a glimpse into Johnston Marklee’s process to refine the design’s modules.

Photo courtesy of Knoll

When introduced at Salone alongside other new Knoll launches like Willo Perron’s Pillo chair, Biboni was presented in a speckled grey upholstery. This combination of a neutral base colour with a top coat of textural charisma was a perfect mirror to Knoll’s broader pavilion design, which featured a clean-lined frame composed of aluminum posts and beams, but also a supersaturated wall covered in graffiti-style artworks. In a praiseworthy sustainability move, the fair stand reused the same architectural kit-of-parts created by Belgian architectural practice OFFICE for Knoll’s 2024 display, and the brand plans to utilize it again for future editions.

Even against this energetic backdrop, Biboni stole the show. “What was most apparent in Milan was seeing the smiles that would appear on the faces of people who sat in it,” Olivares says. “The way it receives and supports the sitter is exactly what you would expect from it’s welcoming form.”

The vivid blue version of Biboni now stationed in Johnston Marklee’s office, meanwhile, serves as a bold exclamation point in the firm’s otherwise-all-white studio. This range of environments effectively demonstrates the sofa’s range: In understated institutional or commercial settings defined by clean lines and disciplined colour schemes, Biboni’s slightly cartoonish forms and bright upholstery options act as a fun contrast — but in contemporary residential spaces filled with other daring, sculptural designs, it becomes a perfect complement that can more than hold its own.

Photo courtesy of Knoll

Adding to its versatility, the design is offered in three sofa sizes — as a two seater, three seater, or four seater — as well as sectional configurations with chaise options.