& by hyunju ahn from korea

Material : tempered glass, aluminum pipe
Size : 1500 * 450 * 900

The existence of an object isn’t independent. Just by existing, an object can affect the thought and the life of a person, and is able to form a relation with other objects. Therefore, even with a single design, the relations with surrounding objects and people will change. For example, Japan’s commercial corporation, MAQ started “Earth Friendly Design Project”, and designed a garbage bag. With the garbage bag design, they accomplished several earth friendly acts like, “creating an artistic-like garbage dump” and “taking home your garbage home”. This garbage bag design acted as a community revolution. Just like this, we understood that a design can affect far more than just a bench design; it could have an effect to its surroundings, and making them into more earth friendly like place to live.

The name of the bench “&” acts as a connector and shows two special features. First feature shows green design through use of material’s both faces. Materials like glass or something else that has transparent features don’t have its own color. It is emptied. But the empty transparent material has a feature to transmit its surroundings and hold it inside itself. This way, this design’s skin can change into anything. Just by a peek, this design just looks like a transparent glass bench. But the empty transparency can change from seasons to seasons, having different appearance, and mood. In the spring, it will have cherry blossoms blooming cherry color. In the summer, it will have nature’s green color. And during the fall, it will have yellow and brown color from the falling leaves. This bench is able to adapt to the color of its surroundings, it can look from dynamic, to gorgeous.
The second feature is that it shows the relations between the users. On this bench, the back of the chair and the handle only exist on one side of the bench. We tried to design a bench that a family or lovers can use. By having one person sitting, and one person lie down on the other person’s lap, this position can only be done within people who are comfortable enough know each other. This way, people can enjoy the harmony of nature with the bench, and may be become even closer with the other person.

The materials used in this design are tempered glass, and aluminum pipe. We’ve tried to show that even with few materials, it still can works as strong street furniture, and with little progress of tempering the materials, and we tried to bring out the quality of the glass.