Lebanese designer Khaled El Mays has designed the Transformers collection, featuring a handmade sofa and armchairs that look like they could stand up and unfurl into giant creatures.
The collection is partly informed by the famous Japanese-American franchise of the same name, where humanoid autonomous robots transform into cars, trucks and other machines.
The armchair's shape is inspired by the Transformers robots
But here the forms are heavily abstracted and romanticised, as El Mays wanted to convey the complicated shapes and large proportions with just a few elements.
His sofa and pair of armchairs are made of bulbous, overstuffed cushions, sometimes joined at sharp angles evocative of the bent limbs of a crouched figure. The pieces appear to lean forward, as if already in a state of transformation. The forms are abstracted and romanticised
El Mays begun creating the Transformers series after watching a video of how robots are developed today.
The more subdued nature of contemporary robotics drove him to explore retrofuturism, as he wanted to capture the imaginative vision for the future we had in the past.
The collection includes a brown cotton sofa
"I was very much interested in the forms and how for me this representation seems very much on steroids comparing to how the actual aesthetics of today are going," El Mays told Dezeen.
"For me, the idea of the robot represents a glimpse of the future of humanity."
"Me intentionally interpreting this i...