projects /
Bench for a Museum
Location
In a museum, where does the building end and furniture begin? Or perhaps more specifically: if a museum's architecture is highly designed for the particulars of the museum's mandate/collection/mission, but still stops short of operating at the scale of the body, how might the furniture for the museum finish the job, so to speak. Renzo Piano's new building for the California Academy of Sciences provokes many questions and interesting opportunities for the client. Our point of departure began with the Piano's conceit to "lift up a section of the park and embed the building under it."
In a museum, where does the building end and furniture begin? Or perhaps more specifically: if a museum's architecture is highly designed for the particulars of the museum's mandate/collection/mission, but still stops short of operating at the scale of the body, how might the furniture for the museum finish the job, so to speak. Renzo Piano's new building for the California Academy of Sciences provokes many questions and interesting opportunities for the client. Our point of departure began with the Piano's conceit to "lift up a section of the park and embed the building under it."
Intervention
Thus an outdoor bench is conceived as primarily ground which has been lifted up and out of the park, providing an adaptable and multi-functional surface which acts as seating, play-structure, and sculpture.
Thus an outdoor bench is conceived as primarily ground which has been lifted up and out of the park, providing an adaptable and multi-functional surface which acts as seating, play-structure, and sculpture.
A joint furniture-architecture studio, taught by Oblio Jenkins and Donald Fortescue, this project was designed in collaboration with Albert Hsu and Robert Hendrickson