Finalisation of Details

From research, insights and findings the park bench details are..:

2 Benches: one 4m long and another one 1.8m long
Will be cast with Reconstituted stone with steel rod reinforcing through it due to the long overhang.
The smaller bench will be anchored to the ground through M12 bolts being cast with it.
Will incorporate Xie He's Guhua Pinlu - 6 Principles for critquing art and the magic of Wu Daozi's paintings that come to life during the night.
They form represents a calligraphic form based on 3 sections - similar to the basis of cnostructing Chinese Characters.
It will be "a brushstroke" in the park, in the city, beautifying the transitional space. >> As alot of art from the tang dynasty onwards was calligraphic and landscape based >> emulate that onto the product.
They will have brushstroke details. >> Will be cast with giant brush marks along the sides of it to further convey a brushstroke on the landscape feel.
Will have a slight curvature into the top surface to let water drain towards the plant/tree.
It will be an amalgamate of a Chinese Aesthetic with a Comtemporary European feel. With more of the latter.
It will be great to look at!

Public Furniture Designer Feedback

I sent an e-mail to a friend and Unitec Graduate who is currently a Public Furniture Designer: here's the great advice/help/tips he gave in regards to my design.

Material- Stone sounds good, although I havent worked with stone to be truthful, I would imagine it would need some kind of reinforcement structure especially with the cut out in your model, also you would need to consider transport- expensive to shift heavy items & there would usually be more than one at a time to install..
If you went with timber, probably something like treated & laminated Macrocarpa (treated meaning with a wax coat which also serves as a graffiti deterrent) as denser woods would cost too much with the volume of your seat, also denser woods you generally buy in lengths not blocks.

Any stainless steel going near seawater should be 316 grade to prevent corrosion, 302 grade for general purposes, or if its Mild Steel it should be galvanised regardless and either powder coated or wet painted (powder coated is cheaper and personally looks nicer)

Anchorage- would certainly have to be fixed to the ground, either buy bolting it down somehow with fairly large bolts M12 or M16?This would allow it to be removable for refurbishing in the future. but then you would need some steel structure to boolt through. Either that or make it permanently fixed or "plant mounted" where you use an anchor to concrete it in on site-could just be some bent steel rods going into a concrete pad or the base of the seat concreted in.

Also you may want to consider skateboard deterrents, as it will prevent damage to the seats, these can just be litle brass or steel knobs sticking out every 1000mm or so on the seat edge.

Anyway I hope this doesnt overwhealm you, its just the basic guidelines our company manufactures by, you can surely just specify alot of this stuff in your final presentation rather than use it to base your design around.

The Model

My first model of the bench made out of plaster with grass used as the plant feature.

Full scale side elevation drawing of the bench with Rob on the side to show scale.

This was one of the later model developments. It is wider all around with enough space for people to sit comfortably back-to-back.

Five models. All variants of the base idea. Compositional form studies.

I shrunk Rob and sat him on the model haha jokes! Photoshop job of Rob sitting on my bench.

Development

Developmental sketches.

Now that i have a more focused idea to work with i played around with the elements of it >> the tree and the form.

Here i was doing thumbnail drawings as compositional studies as well as looking into how it will be placed/elevated from the ground.

Roger's drawings from the discussion about how it will be placed on the ground which was something i hadn't entirely thought about previously in the project. Will it be raised on wooden blocks? on blocks from the same material as the bench? How will it be secured to the ground?

More developmental sketches >> creating different aesthetics.

With the time left available i chose a simple yet nice form to work with which was actually pretty similar to my original concept sketch of the idea.

Park Benches in China

Examples of park benches found in China. Pictures were collected with thanks to my friend Jessie in Shanghai.

Examples of benches found on the net that are manufactured in China.

Nearly all of the benches have none of the design values as seen in european furniture nor do they have a Chinese feel about them.

Parks and the Outdoors

Photos of the outdoors and parks of China. From the constructed parks to the enchanting natural geographical features. My bench will go in these places also.

Streets of China

Images of the streets of China. My product will be in places like the above.

Escofet: Outdoor Furnishings

Escofet is a Spainish outdoor furniture and outdoor design manufacturer. Their products are quite popular in europe and have a unique spainish design aesthetic to them.

As i have taken up the role of being an outdoor furniture designer for this assignment Escofet is a good model to look at and learn from. What i'm attempting to do in a few weeks Escofet has been doing it for over a century!

http://www.escofet.com

Concepts!

Concepts!



This image was drawn alot earlier in the project when my drawing skills were still warming up! Just a few ideas. The stand out one is the cloud hanging from a tree.

Concepts on brown paper! a personal favourite for substrates. With the idea of transition on my mind towards westernisation Forks came to mind! Why not a fork seat? Unfortunately i was beaten to this well before my time in the 60s by Claus Oldenberg!

Other stand-outs were the accompanying knife and spoon to the fork haha.. and then there was also the boxy turtle park bench. Turtle patterned bench with angled out feet. Funky and interesting form. There's also a few notes regarding public furniture and from my discussion with Roger> main point of discussion: Furniture as a canvas. Combine a simple form with surface patterns/textures.

Simple forms as well as complex forms. The concept on the left of the page is a traditional table with a cropped table top for sitting on.

Straight geometrical based forms. Simple again. Stand-out concept is the combined tree/plant vase with bench. The lower level of the bench is a trench that flows to the base of the vase to water the bench flora.

More concepts, planning notes for the project and presentation.

More concepts.

There were 3 stand-out concepts on this page.

The top left: simple form with a wooden top for seating.

The top right: each bench is different in that it has part of one story inscribed on it. As you seat yourself on the furniture you can look towards other benches to reveal the story.

The bottom right: the images on the benches are slotted on and replaceable. Can be used to create a new story, decorate the city for an event, promote something etc.

On discussion with Roger on the latter idea the concept of instead of creating new plates to slot onto the bench>> interchangeable moulds. Applying the same effects but in the opposite way.

The concept I have chosen to develop is the bench with the integrated vase. It is a simple idea, can be visually captivating, and has room for finer detail development.

Initial workings

My Research wall includes images and information on various ancient Chinese Artifacts and calligraph.

My lecturer was in the paper! Included in the article were products from past students at Unitec.

The matrixing creativity technique based on the words Park and Furniture.

Thoughts on the transitional space.