Bench

About

Benches are among the oldest furniture. Medieval halls lined their walls with fixed benches, and the high-backed settle, often with a storage box under the seat, stood by the hearth to keep out draughts. Churches filled with pews, and 19th-century city parks installed cast-iron and timber benches in their thousands.

Modern designers found the form ideal for clear structure. George Nelson's slatted Platform Bench (1946) doubles as a low table, and George Nakashima set spindle backs into single slabs of walnut. Artists and designers have since bent the park bench into sculpture: Pablo Reinoso's Spaghetti Bench lets its slats curl and wander like vines, and studios such as nendo reduce the bench to a few precise lines. Wood, stone, concrete, metal and recycled plastic all appear. Look at how the seat spans between supports, since that span sets the bench's character.