Product news: Montreal-based designers St-Ely have created a sofa made up of three interchangeable modules with sliced-off corners.

St-Ely is a collaboration between industrial designer Eugenie Manseau and architect Hubert Pelletier. The seating has been launched by Lerival, an American design house that connects furniture design with architecture.

The design was inspired by the comfortable, angled back of old 1920s and 1930s couches and combined with the orthogonal rigidity of contemporary furniture.

Folding the ends of each module creates an angle between the back and sides, which the designers liken to ears.

"Most modular sofas are a continuous piece sliced up," Pelletier said to Dezeen. "We wanted to subtly stress the idea of the individual units and the act of combining these units together."

"The fold at each end is the dominant detail of the design and creates a repetitive motif when many units are assembled," he continued.

A key consideration for St-Ely was the impact of the piece on the surrounding space: "A large piece of furniture like a sofa can be used to articulate the architectural space, divide rooms and underline functional transitions in space."

"We think the back view is as important as the front or side view. By expressing the fold on the back side we created a formal detail that is coherent with the front view and that animates the back side," Pelletier added.

More modular seating we have featured on Dezeen includes triangular sofas that tesselate to create different forms within a space and a modular seating system that encourages interaction between people.