LDF 2012: Ten designers create a bench to mark a decade of the festival

Date
21 September 2012

There’s always a project like this at The London Design Festival but it’s rare the names involved are this fantastic, and the results so good. Bench Years at The V&A is a series of one-off benches designed by the likes of Barber Osgerby, Martino Gamper, Konstantin Gric and Felix de Pass, one for each year LDF has been running.

Established & Sons paired the designers up with a supplier and the brief was to create something that harnessed the attributes of materials from cork to ceramic, steel to marble. Wandreing around the grandiose setting of the museum’s John Madjeski Garden it’s a reminder that even the most everyday objects encapsulate dozens of design decisions, and it’s also one of the rare LDF projects you can sit on which is a bonus.

Our particular favourites were Felix’s simple, metallic structure, Martino’s gorgeous wooden offering and Konstantin’s surprisingly comfortable mosaic bench, reminiscent of every swimming pool you ever went to in the 1990s.

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AL_A: Bench Years with Established and Sons

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Barber Osgerby: Bench Years with Established and Sons

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Felix de Pass: Bench Years with Established and Sons

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Konstantin Grcic: Bench Years with Established and Sons

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Alexander Taylor: Bench Years with Established and Sons

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Martino Gamper: Bench Years with Established and Sons

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

Rob joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in July 2011 before becoming Editor-in-Chief and working across all editorial projects including itsnicethat.com, Printed Pages, Here and Nicer Tuesdays. Rob left It’s Nice That in June 2015.

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