The Longest Bench

Studio Weave is a London based company who created this bench in Littlehampton on the South coast. The bench is the longest in Britain, seating 300 people along the sea front promenade. The bench is made out of thousands of wooden slats/bars reclaimed from old groynes or found in landfill sites. At bends or curves in the bench there are brightly coloured wooden bars, adding a playful feel to the project.

The old shelters that used to line the promenade have been replaced with new shelters that incorporate the bench. Within the shelters the bench loops & twists, forming a playable feature as well as seating & openings. The bench is also engraved with names & messages of people who supported the design, this is ongoing & people can email the company requesting their message to be added along the bench.

Images courtesy of http://www.studioweave.com/projects/the-longest-bench-littlehampton/

Bikeway Belém

A new 7362-meter bikeway was constructed along the River Tagus in the centre of Lisbon. The project, by P-06 Atelier & Global Landscape Architecture, was designed to provide a wayfinding system to guide users along the waterfront, as well as increase usage & awareness of the wide variety of urban landscapes that it traverses.

Bold, white text has been painted directly onto the new cycle path surface. The text provides cyclists with directions, distances & defines the cycle paths themselves.

Cyclists are drawn further along the waterfront by intervals of graphic & narrative interventions. The image above shows a pier with words from the Portuguese poet Alberto Caeiro's poem about the River Tagus.

The overall idea of the continuing installations along the path is to create a story along the waterfront that people want to follow. This draws them further & further along the waterfront, experiencing new sights & areas of the city that they would otherwise never experience. The project budget was 600,000 Euros for installation & fabrication.

The project won the Merit award in SEGD's (Society For Environmental Graphic Design) Design Awards 2010

Images courtesy of SEGD.org