In recent years, the aura of the outdoor world has increasingly entered the homes we inhabit. The theme is not new: we often invoked it when discussing the consequences of Covid-19 and the outdoor life that, between 2020 and 2021, we could only contemplate from our windows. But are we sure that outdoor furniture had not already slipped into the intimate and protected perimeter of our rooms, blurring and destabilising the line that separates interiors from exteriors?
The transition has indeed happened, and it unfolded quietly, gradually. Over the decades the aristocratic — and later upper-bourgeois — vocation of the home as a place of representation has faded. At the same time, the increasingly elastic nature of our dwellings — nothing more than a reflection of the fluid flexibility of contemporary life — has taken hold. The result is that rooms sheltered by roofs and thresholds have long since absorbed a taste for outdoor furniture, making its categorisation increasingly ambiguous and elusive.
Between the living room and the terrace there is no longer a clear threshold, but a continuous gradient of uses, forms and imaginaries.
Already at the turn of the twentieth century, camp and garden seating anticipated this tendency. The Tripolina and the Indian chair, both developed in England as reflections of military life and new colonial habits, offered clear examples of how a new formal language could first create an archetype and then disrupt conventions by slipping into living rooms and bedrooms.
The Butterfly Chair — an ode to the informality of the body and posture that already in its name evokes the freedom of movement associated with life outdoors — did more than renew the vocabulary of the folding chair. Designed by Grupo Austral in Argentina and later commercialised in the United States by Knoll, it found a place in domestic interiors across continents. A similar trajectory can be traced in the quintessential metal chair, Tolix, which about a decade ago became ubiquitous in interiors shaped by industrial aesthetics — but the same could also be said of the Chaise Nicolle, another enigmatic French icon of garden furniture, still thriving wherever a loft-like spirit prevails.
The legitimacy behind this shift in gravity has often been a matter of materials. Wicker, rattan and cane are emblematic examples: historically associated with outdoor furniture, they found in Franco Albini, Gio Ponti, Tito Agnoli and Gabriella Crespi designers capable of transcending that association and freeing them from the garden context, legitimising their presence in any domestic environment.
Garden furniture also entered the home through the power of imagery — think of the erotic aura surrounding the Peacock Chair in the film Emmanuelle, whose woven structure combines lightness and monumentality. And what about Aldo Rossi’s Cabina dell’Elba, a sui generis wardrobe that instantly evokes the sounds and idleness of beach life? Another material narrative concerns tables and benches in concrete and terrazzo, long associated with outdoor settings but equally at ease indoors. Examples include Aspic by Gordon Guillaumier for Roda, the Fusto Collection tables by Studio Irvine for Forma & Cemento, and the Juno coffee tables by Draga & Aurel for Baxter.
In recent years, innovation in materials and forms has continued to drive this passage from terrace to living room. Plastic seating, originally conceived for popular outdoor environments, has acquired increasingly sophisticated finishes and coverings. While these protect against weathering, they also paradoxically make such pieces more legitimate within domestic interiors. At the opposite end of the spectrum lies the collectible design world, where experimentation has further dissolved rigid boundaries. The Objets Nomades collection, which Louis Vuitton has been developing for more than a decade, exemplifies this attitude by bringing the language of travel into the domestic sphere.
Finally, in the realm of upholstered furniture, several collections launched in recent years explicitly embrace this liminal condition — a way of living comfortably between two environments. Passage, designed by Ronan Bouroullec for Kettal, emphasises this hybrid identity already in its name, with chairs and sofas equally suited to public spaces, private outdoor settings, or residential interiors. Brezza, a sofa system by Alessandro Stabile for S.Cab, reinterprets informal seating through an apparently structureless composition of oversized cushions: introduced in 2024 as an outdoor product, it now arrives in an indoor version thanks to new coverings.
Among Magis’ latest collections, In-Side by British designer Thomas Heatherwick transforms a sculptural form into a universal piece suited to virtually any setting. The sofa is made from post-consumer polyethylene, revalued through a process that elevates waste into a design feature. It is a strategy that dismantles expectations through design ingenuity, reaffirming that neither material nor comfort alone shape legitimate habits and associations — rather, it is the form itself and the behaviours it generates.
Opening image: Cabina dell’Elba by Aldo Rossi