Why You Must Upgrade Your Home with Roche Bobois Furniture—Especially the Mah Jong Sofa

For 50 years now, luxury furniture brand Roche Bobois from Paris has been known for its iconic designs and distinctive collaborations with well-known fashion and interior designers from all over the world, especially for limited edition versions of its best-selling Mah Jong Sofa.

Roche Bobois has showrooms all over the world, including the US and Spain where it first launched its showrooms outside France in 1974, followed by the ones in Italy in 1995, Luxembourg, the UK, and China in 2004—its 100th Roche Bobois showroom in the world. By 2014, Roche Bobois’ international presence has grown to more than 250 showrooms in over 50 different countries, and continues to grow abroad. Among their showrooms in Asia are those in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Manila.

If you’re about to decorate your new home or update your space with new furniture, here’s why you should upgrade to Roche Bobois:

1. Customization allows all Roche Bobois pieces to be unique.

Every piece of furniture at Roche Bobois is designed to be customized to suit any taste or mood. They give you the choice of a wide variety of sizes, materials, colors, finishes, and even stitches, and guide you through your design projects so they are harmonized with your lifestyle.

2. Their stores have consistent service, aesthetic, and technological innovations.

Their interior designers are equipped with an in-store 3D studio and the latest digital interior design software so they can recreate and play with any given space. And whichever showroom you visit in any of the 50 countries where they are present, you will find the same congenial atmosphere, service, and attentiveness. Each showroom strives to reflect the local culture and lifestyle while remaining true to the brand’s unique and French aesthetic.

3. They offer eco-conscious designs.

If you’re making an effort to have a more environment-friendly home, Roche Bobois is a good brand to work with, as it continues to develop a new and more sustainable approach to design and manufacturing. It began by developing its own process of evaluation—Eco6. This software allowed them to design more sustainable furniture and consider the best ways of making existing products more sustainable. Already more than 150 of their pieces have been deemed sustainable according to Eco6 guidelines. 

And then in 2015, Eco6 was redeveloped to become Eco8, now based on four stages of the life cycle, each analyzed by two criteria:

Stage 1: Material profile

Criteria: Structure & Upholstery

This notes the environmental profile of the materials used for the structure and upholstery, as well as their mass contribution (use of sustainable resources, recycled or recyclable materials, etc.).

Stage 2: Manufacturing

Criteria: Finishes & Environmental Management 

This factors in the glues and finishes (stains, varnishes, etc.) as well as the environmental approaches implemented by their workshops, such as using certified wood from sustainably managed forests.

Stage 3: Use

Criteria: Durability & Consumption 

This considers the product’s durability and the type of lighting and the electrical performance of the product’s light source (using LEDs, energy performance, etc.).

Stage 4: End of life

Criteria: Number of materials & Separability

This considers the number of different materials used (less materials reduces the different methods for end of life reprocessing) and separability of the materials used (total or partial, allowing easier end of life reprocessing).

Each of the 8 criteria is rated from 1 to 4, after which an average is determined. Internally, a product is considered eco-designed when it has a rating greater than or equal to 3. In their catalogue, you will find these pieces labelled with the small pictogram that says “eco-conceived.”

4. They created the one sofa every beautiful home needs to have: The Mah Jong Sofa

Roche Bobois' iconic sofa was created in 1971 by painter, sculptor, and designer Hans Hopfer, based on the total freedom of function and form. 

Starting with three basic elements that can be combined, aligned, grouped, or stacked, the Mah Jong allows limitless options of composition. It can be an armchair, corner sofa, straight sofa, armless sofa, lounge chair, or day bed; a space in which to rest, to play, or to lounge. It encourages experimentation and breaks the rules of formal living. By encouraging people to arrange the elements to what suits them best, the Mah Jong can change the landscape of a living room, offering a whole new approach to the way we view and reorganize the spaces in which we live.

It was considered avant-garde when it was first created, but it has since become the indisputable “signature” of Roche Bobois’ collections, with special editions “dressed” by prominent and talented fashion houses like Missoni Home and Jean Paul Gaultier. Each of these unique collaborators managed to highlight a new, captivating, and surprising facet of the Mah Jong without changing its core design.

Italian fashion house Missoni Home used its iconic chevron stripes, refined fabrics, and floral and graphic patterns to give the Mah Jong a fresh new look. Meanwhile, French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier placed his creative stamp on the Mah Jong by “dressing” it in both his iconic striped sailor-style costume and the poetic and graphic motifs of his Haute Couture fashion.

For more information on Roche Bobois and the Mah Jong Sofa, and to find the showroom nearest you, visit the website.