Finnish designer Jouko Järvisalo’s Mondi Soft chairs reads as soft sculptural furniture: its base unfurls like a gown’s train, form edging toward costume. Built in 1985, it relies on molded polyurethane foam as structure rather than upholstery, producing a low, continuous volume with no visible legs or seams doing the work. The result is an informal recline, closer to lounging than sitting “properly.”

By the late Cold War, modernist restraint had loosened into expressiveness. Mondi Soft has a goofy postmodernism to it. In profile, its armrests and legs resolve into a geometric outline, but from behind, the backrest softens into a generous arc. It adds a theatricality to the most ordinary act — sitting.