t defining a specific context, we began this reflexion by considering public space as a large laboratory of shapes and colors. And our attachment point is the bench. The public one, this object which is never possessed but belongs to me as well as everyone. We strongly be- lieve that using this collective good is not trivial at all.
To sit together on a bench is to make a simultaneous experience
of a drawing. It is to share the same material support. By exploring a par- ticular idea of benches with models and drawings first, we thought about bodies and eyes : guide them to
each other, or isolate them to better gather them together. By taking a distance with usual public bench ty- pology, we considered these objects
as territories, as spaces into spaces which would ask users to make choices. Our material expenses and shapes compositions were always accompagned by the exquisite pros- pect of users free appropriation.
Every of our proposal is thought to exist independently to each other, as so many exclamation marks in streetscape. For all that, every of
it fed each other and we definitely worked all the propositions as a single project.
Among these different searches we chose to develop one, certai- nely because it represent an over- view design of our public bench approach: l’exèdre. Originally, the exedra is a half circular monumen- tal stone bench located in public gardens during ancient Greece and Rome. We wanted to re-design this antique piece in our own way, kee- ping the symbolic shape but depri- ving the spectacular and massive dimension. The circular typology is an opposition to the predominance
of flux science in our public spaces. It breaks axes and calls the pause as a privileged moment.
In our exedra, each foot extend in individual backrests as an evocation of individualities gathered around a common base. The structure is about collective effort : a circular commu- nal base in wood around which the backrest-foot steel pieces assure together the stability of the bench.
A clock dominate above the bench
as an allegory of the pause and the meeting place. From the church bells, to public clock, to our wrists, until our pockets with phones, time has been loosing it materiality and communal stature. We chose here to give back the place and importance that time occupied in public spaces by combining it physically to this bench.