Combining eco-friendly approach, a desire for simplicity, but also uniqueness, the hRId bench was born from sea and rock. It is imagined as a completely modular system unique in it's every element, yet a modest and subtle part of urban equipment for the city of Rijeka, primarily the newly renovated Molo Longo breakwater.
Inspiration for the rocky structure of the benches comes from the fact that Molo Longo after it's renovation became a new part of the cityscape, visually distancing itself as a breakwater of the harbor and the sea it belongs to. Idea was was to contrast the modern and architecturally pure environment with some of the organic, chaotic, natural and almost unplanned, rebuilding the relation between the coast and the sea, the promenade and the breakwater.
The seats are made in three simple steps from large rocks creating uniformity of the elements and materials. As it is impossible to find two rocks that look the same, no two seats can be the same. The sitting surface is different on every single one, so it creates a place for one or more people, while the edges of the rock create the shape. With that in mind, there could be more seats, without a suggested way of sitting on them, without front or back, in the form created by nature.
Due to the simplicity of the module, options for combining are infinite, giving the final user a choice of privacy and peace, or communication and socialising. The heihgt is standard, so it is appropriate for both older people having a walk by the sea and younger folk just exiting the Terminal night club. The materials used are completely eco-friendly, durable, available and simple. The hRId seats would welcome arriving tourists by radiating a warm Mediterranean feel while fitting Rijeka in the image of a modern European city combined with a traditional coastal look, giving the town a new and unique element of identity.
