MODULAR PIECE OF FURNITURE

Title:

"Modular piece of furniture"

The present invention in its most general aspect relates to a piece of furniture of the modular type.

As it is known furnishings are usually marketed as separate pieces, which are then assembled by the installer or by the end user.

This applies mainly to furniture such as wardrobes, cupboards or even beds, but also, although less commonly, to furniture such as armchairs, sofas, chaise longue or other similar pieces of furniture, intended for people to seat on.

The present invention particularly relates to this type of furniture, wherein the several parts such as the backrest, the armrests, the seat and other ones, are composed of separate elements that are assembled during the assembly step.

As it is known the modularity of furniture allows storage and transport costs to be reduced, since the several elements composing it can be easily arranged and stored in a rational manner, making maximum use of the available spaces.

In fact it is easy to understand that the space occupied by an armchair or a sofa can make it difficult not only to transport it on a van or another vehicle, but also to handle it in restricted spaces, such as a lift or the staircases of a house where it has to be delivered.

An example of a modular piece of furniture according to these criteria is described in the American Patent N. 3,973,800 to Kogan granted in 1976.

This document describes a piece of furniture such as a sofa or an armchair, which is made by assembling panels having variable dimensions and thicknesses depending on whether they are intended to compose the seat, or the armrests or the back of the sofa.

In order to assemble the several elements of the piece of furniture, there are provided connection means essentially composed of brackets engaging into corresponding hooking seats; both brackets and seats are made in the form of hardware parts which are fastened to the panels by means of screws.

This solution is functional but it is only adapted for modular furniture made of panels having a given thickness and of strong materials; indeed, brackets need to be screwed on a solid surface which then allows stresses that can be generated when using the sofa or armchair to be withstood; this means that panels described in the patent to Kogan have an inner frame or are made of a solid structure, for example wood.

It follows that the furniture structure is quite massive and consequently even heavy; therefore it is intended for being applied to modern furniture, for example those for outdoor spaces which have to be moved more frequently than those intended for a home environment.

With regard to this aspect, the modular piece of furniture described in the American patent application US2010/0253127 to Keter is an improvement to prior art.

In fact this document describes a modular furniture system wherein the several assembleable elements are in the form of thin panels, made of plastic material or the like; for connecting the several elements hardware parts are used such as brackets, gliders, wrenches, nuts, screws etc..

In particular, some of such parts are snap-fitted into corresponding seats or openings of the panels, which are prearranged at the relevant areas, for example along the edges to be connected. This solution however has the drawback of having a high number of pieces to be used for assembling the piece of furniture, which can be easily lost during the assembly or can be subjected to removal from the seats wherein they are engaged due to their quite small dimensions.

The present invention aims at improving this prior art.

Therefore the problem underlying the invention is to provide a modular piece of furniture, particularly but not exclusively intended for sitting purposes such as a sofa, an armchair or the like, with such structural and functional features to overcome the drawbacks found in furniture of the prior art mentioned above.

The idea for solving such problem is to provide a piece of furniture wherein the elements to be assembled such as armrests, seat, backrest and the other ones, are composed of panels that can be connected together without the need of specific external additional parts to be applied thereon, and which therefore could be lost during the assembly.

The invention comprises also a modular structure of said piece of furniture, allowing furniture with greater dimensions to be produced by replicating a base module.

The features of the invention are specifically stated in the claims annexed to the present disclosure; such characteristics and effects deriving therefrom will be more clear from the explanation of a preferred and not exclusive embodiment of the invention, with reference to the attached drawings wherein:

Fig.l is a perspective view of an armchair according to the invention;

Figs. 2 to 8 are respective assembleable elements constituting the armchair of f g.1 ; Figs. 9a to 9o are respective steps for assembling the armchair of fig.1 ; Fig.10 is a perspective view of a modular sofa made according to the invention; Fig. l 1 is a detail of a element of the sofa of fig.10;

Figs. 12a to 12p are the respective steps for assembling the sofa of fig.l 0;

Figs. 13a to 13d are a variant of the system for hooking the elements composing the sofa of fig.10.

With reference to the drawings listed above, figures I to 9 relate to a first embodiment of the invention regarding a modular armchair, generally denoted by reference numeral 1 ; such armchair comprises two side boards 2, 3 each one constituting a side element of the armchair incorporating the armrest thereof and therefore in the following they will be referred to also as side elements or simply armrests.

The armchair 1 further comprises a backrest 4 and a seat 5, underneath which a cover crosspiece 6 in the front region is arranged.

The elements constituting the armchair 1 can be seen individually in figures 2 to 8 which show, in addition to the elements just mentioned, even a cover board 7, a seat surface 8, a rear closure board 10 and a back panel 1 1.

According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, all the elements composing the armchair are assembleable in snap engagement one another; they are further preferably made of plastic material such as polypropylene, polyethylene, polyurethane or the like. To this end the configuration of the elements 2-1 1 is such that people skilled in the art know how to make them by plastic material molding. According to the invention, the several elements 2-1 1 composing the armchair 1 comprise snap connection means made as one piece, namely not in the form of separate parts. For instance, as regards the side elements 2 and 3 of the armchair, along the vertical edges there are arranged pins 40 and collars 41 , intended to engage corresponding elements 60, 61 provided on the front crosspiece 6 and 140, 141 arranged on the back panel 1 1.

Moreover, the side elements 2 and 3 of the armchair have guides 42, 43 extending in the depth direction and they are intended to be engaged with the cover board 7 applied on the inner side of the side elements 2 and 3, at their upper part that constitutes the armrest of the armchair.

In the front portion of the back panel 1 1 there are provided recesses 142 that act as a guide for protrusions 80 of the seat surface 8; this latter is further supported between the two side elements 2, 3 by respective brackets 70 provided on each cover board 7 associated to a side element of the armchair.

This latter is assembled by connecting the elements 2-1 1 mentioned above by means of the sequence of operations shown in figures 9a-9a, where arrows show some assembling movements; the comprehension of such operations is quite easy from figures that explain better than words the modes by which elements are assembled.

It is worth mentioning that, actually, the armchair 1 is obtained by coupling the elements 2-11 together without the need of separate hardware parts, since pins 40, 60, 140, collars 41 , 61 , 141 and brackets 70 are all made as one piece with the elements themselves.

It has to be further noted that pins 40, 60, 140 and collars 41 , 61 , 141 are made on the elements 2-9 along the relevant edges, such to allow them to be connected by linear, vertical and horizontal movements, pointed out by arrows in the figures. This facilitates the assembly of the piece of furniture and it also guarantees stability of the structure thereof, since by suitably selecting the relative movement for assembling the several elements 2-9, a firm furniture structure is obtained.

Thus, for instance, as regards the front crosspiece 6 that carries a part of the weight of a person sitting on the seat 5, a downward vertical coupling movement with respect to the side elements 2, 3 is provided in order to assemble it, as shown in fig. 9d.

Similarly, for the back panel 1 1 in addition to the vertical movement there is provided also a front engagement with the pins 40 and collars 41 which are along the edge of the side elements 2, 3.

However it will be optionally possible to provide means intended to stabilize the assembled structure of the armchair, for example screws, which however will serve only for keeping the several pieces in the connected condition and therefore they are not stressed when the armchair is under normal operating conditions. A version provided with screws for the stabilization will be described below.

If instead of a single armchair a sofa has to be made these advantageous results deriving from the elimination of separate parts are enhanced.

In this case such parts would be duplicated, thus further enhancing the drawbacks mentioned above with reference to the prior art.

An example of the sofa according to the invention is shown in figures 10, 12a-12p, wherein for the sake of convenience elements like those already seen before are denoted by the same reference numeral.

Moreover, due to the modularity of the sofa obtained by replicating the structure of the previous armchair, for the sake of simplicity the pieces of the second module are designated by a prime symbol.

As it can be easily understood by observing the figures, in this case the sofa 21 essentially comprises two armchair structures connected together at the centre line. To this end the sofa comprises a central partition 20, made by the same criteria as the other elements, namely with pins 40, 40', collars 41 , 4Γ, brackets 70, 71 ', incorporated into the structure thereof.

The central partition 20 has a symmetrical arrangement with respect to its positioning plane and pins 40, 40' collars 41 , 4Γ and brackets 70, 70' are arranged on both the sides thereof, such to allow it to be engaged with front crosspieces 6, 6' and with back panels 1 1 , 1 1 '.

Obviously by the same principle it will be possible to make modular sofas with a higher number of seats (e.g. three, four, etc.), not only straight ones but also corner ones.

Obviously other variants are also possible both as regards the armchair and the sofa of the invention, with respect to the ones mentioned above; for example the shape of the side elements and of the armrests can be subjected to changes, it being no necessary for them to have the squared shapes seen in the drawings; the same shall apply to backrests or to front crosspieces, where the drawing may be different.

Finally even as regards the connection means for the several elements it is possible to provide solutions different than pins and seats as considered above; however it matters that such means are integral with the elements (side elements, backrest, etc.) that compose the piece of furniture.

Figs. 13a-13d show in a sequence of operating steps a variant consisting in using screws 160 in addition to pins 40, 60, 140 and to collars 41 , 61 , 141 described above, which are intended to increase the stability of the modular piece of furniture. In this variant, screws 160 (shown in figs. 13c-13d) act only for safety purposes, which under normal operating conditions (assembled piece of furniture) stabilize the structure of the piece of furniture, but they have not to withstand loads, such as for instance the weight of a person. In other words, screws 160 serve for holding together the piece of furniture when, for example, it is raised or dragged. Therefore screws 160 can be made of plastic too, like the piece of furniture, since they have not to show particular strength, with obvious advantages as regards economy and easy of assembly (high tightening torques are not necessary). Moreover, in order to further facilitate the assembly of the piece of furniture, screws 160 have a head with such a size that they can be manually tightened without using screwdrivers, wrenches or so on.

In the operating condition, the screw 160 is introduced into a hole 150 situated on the edge of the element 11 and it is fitted into a partially threaded seat 50, compatible with such screw.

Due to the small stresses to which the threaded seat 50, the screw 160 and the edge of the hole 150 are subjected, the threaded seat 50 can advantageously have a seat opened at one side, facilitating its molding together with the side element 2, 3 of the piece of furniture where it is arranged.

However all these variants fall within the scope of the following claims.