Toronto-based Fig40 has announced that its Perplex Bench has won two 2017 European Product Design Awards – Gold in Material Design and Manufacturing and Gold in Outdoor and Exercise Equipment/Patio/Garden Furniture and Accessories
The bench is the result of exploring two distinct objectives: 1) to create a bench that is impossibly long and impossibly thin; and 2) to explore the potential of a new technology for treating surfaces of metal in creating new composite materials.
The means to achieve this bench came through the development of GripMetal technology cast into concrete. The metal used in the bench’s core is a consistently shaped field of hooks formed onto ultra-thin gauge metal surfaces. Like a metallic Velcro, it can be pressed, moulded or cast to create a bond that is mechanical and continuous, strengthening hundreds of times per inch. In this case, two boxes were constructed and cast into the bench form.
The result is a 14’ (4.25m) long bench. “We have always been compelled to create as long a bench as we can, not only as a sculptural exercise, but as a functional one – strangers don’t want to be too close to each other, and if they’re not strangers, why not get everyone on one bench?” says Lee Fletcher.
For more information on the Perplex Bench, click here.
