Established & Sons has collaborated with The London Design Festival to create a series of one-off benches to mark ten years of the Festival in September 2012. The Bench Years brings together ten acclaimed international designers, matched with ten unique material suppliers and tasked with the creation of a bench. This collection of benches will be exhibited in the Buda Tower during INTERIEUR.
Within a city, the bench is a recurring component of our urban furniture yet its design is often subject to so many limitations to do with size, durability, vandalism etc. The Bench Years project aims to free designers of such limitations, instead giving them a particular material to focus on. The resulting family of benches explores the versatility of the materials and challenges our assumptions of the humble bench.
The American Hardwood Export Council has teamed up with designer Martino Gamper to create an imaginative but very functional 6 meter long hardwood bench featuring a sophisticated patchwork pattern. This is an exciting opportunity for AHEC to demonstrate the potential of U.S. hardwoods in exterior use.
Infinity Bench is inspired by the Italian concept of autoprogettazione (translated as self-made). Brought to life by Italian designer Enzo Mari, it aims to produce superior quality, functional furniture with materials in one’s own house. Gamper’s interest in this concept led him to create the Infinity Bench, which celebrates colour, texture and shape through the use of different hardwood species.
The American red oak, soft maple, ash, yellow birch and tulipwood that make up Infinity Bench have been thermally modified. The thermal modification process uses a high temperature in a controlled environment permanently altering the wood’s chemical and physical properties. This limits the ability of the wood to absorb moisture, so products are more dimensionally stable and less prone to cup, warp and twist with changes in humidity. The thermal modification process also removes the nutrients in wood that would otherwise provide a food source for insects and wooddestroying fungi. This increase in dimensional stability and decay resistance significantly extends the service life and reduces maintenance needs of the bench. The design of the bench is intentionally simple to allow the natural textures, patterns and finishes of the wood to showcase their natural beauty.
"I used the autoprogettazione concept as a starting point for my design and to keep the planks as simple as possible. In doing so, I wanted to highlight the liveliness and irregularity of using different types of wood,” says Gamper.
Martino Gamper studied sculpture and product design at the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna after completing an apprenticeship in cabinet making. Gamper soon transferred to product design under the leadership of architect and designer Matteo Thun. In 1994, before his degree was complete, he was employed by Thun’s studio in Milan where he went on to design products and furniture. By 1997 Gamper moved to London to study at the Royal College of Art and has made the UK his home. The exhibition 100 Chairs in 100 Days in 2007 saw Gamper make 100 chairs in as many days allowing his deep-rooted curiosity, knowledge and respect of design history to emanate through his designs. In 2011 he won the Moroso Award for Contemporary Art and the Wallpaper* Magazine Award for Best Use of Colour. He has recently been commissioned to design street furniture for the Park-to-Park connection from Victoria Park to the Olympic park, London in collaboration with LTGDC.
