22.10.2024

BENKERT BÄNKE: sustainable benches made of durable stainless steel

Building design

The Chalidor series from BENKERT has received an award and offers up to 200 basic colors.

In architecture, benches serve as important accents and as a place to sit and linger. They enhance the quality of places. However, in order for them to fulfill their function in the long term and without much maintenance, they must be durable and also meet sustainability criteria. BENKERT BÄNKE shows what the bench of the future will look like.

The choice of benches concerns both architects and urban planners. After all, urban furniture has a major influence on the identity and use of spaces. Factors such as the configuration and location of a bench influence how people use the space and how they perceive buildings. In combination with street lighting and other street furniture, benches can increase the safety of places and prevent vandalism. They make the city more liveable and create identity.

The company BENKERT BÄNKE is a pioneer for modern and sustainable benches. These are not made of wood, but rather of recycled stainless steel and, in some cases, recycled PET coatings. The modular benches from the Lower Franconian company, which can be extended with matching street furniture, have already won several design awards, such as the DNA Paris Design Award, the EPDA European Product Design Award, the German Design Award, the Good Design Award, the IDA, the LICC and the SIT Award.

The Chalidor models and the modular Linesca seating option from BENKERT BÄNKE are the company’s award winners and offer many architectural highlights. The Chalidor benches for parks and public spaces are characterized by their interplay of colors and shapes. They are made of stainless steel and are available in various sizes and designs, such as chairs, stools, loungers and seating groups. Most of the products in the award-winning Chalidor series can be strung together as endless benches, both in the same and in over 8,500 colors. This creates individual lengths that make a room special.

In 2024, the Linesca benches from BENKERT received the German Design Award for their boundless lines and sophisticated design. As a modular bench, Linesca is well suited for creative furniture arrangements in public spaces. The company recommends using the stainless steel elements with their connectors in parks, schoolyards or company campuses, for example. A wide variety of shapes can be created, from simple designs to complex structures.

Benches are particularly important in front of landmarks or in places where people are waiting for transport. Street furniture is also used to enjoy the view and engage in dialog. In addition to fixed, timeless benches, BENKERT BÄNKE also offers modular options that are particularly suitable for gardens and for specific seasons or events.

This is in line with an important trend in the design of cities and buildings, where the user experience is increasingly taking center stage. Comfortable, ergonomic and modular benches can change the way people use a space. Be it mobile furniture with reconfigurable seating, with bicycle parking, with planters, with litter garbage cans or with bollards, BENKERT has a wide range of products so that entire seating islands can be created with a coherent overall look. Comfort is a top priority.

The BENKERT BÄNKE company has been closely linked to architecture since it was founded over three decades ago. For example, the famous Swiss architect Mario Botta designed the company building in Altershausen near Königsberg in Lower Franconia. This building forms a symbiosis of nature and architecture and thus reflects the company’s philosophy. From design and conception to complete production, all stages of the outdoor furniture process take place in the inspiring building, with both innovative technology and loving craftsmanship playing a role. Even BENKERT’s historic Pausa product line, which still has a major influence on the company’s work today, was designed by Mario Botta. This is why architects still prefer the company’s characterful and high-quality solutions today.

The company’s tranquil surroundings inspire the team to see outdoor furniture as a haven of peace for people. Ecological action is just as important to BENKERT BÄNKE as harmonious coexistence. Accordingly, the company is not only sustainable and CO2-neutral, but also climate-positive. The company site laid the foundations for this back in 1997. No oil, gas or water is used in the production of the benches. The transparent roofs use the solar effect for heating, while natural thermal insulation and modern wood chip heating further contribute to minimizing BENKERT BÄNKE’s footprint.

The company also produces its outdoor furniture with the same sustainability in mind. It is 100 percent recyclable after its useful life. They require virtually no maintenance and are very durable. The stainless steel used consists of 55 to 80 percent recycled material. BENKERT BÄNKE does not use wood, because although the raw material is renewable and has a great deal of sustainable potential, the company believes it is not ideal for benches. This is because outdoor furniture made of wood is subject to faster wear and more intensive maintenance, which can have an unnecessary impact on the environment.

So instead of importing wood, the company relies on 100% recyclable materials such as stainless steel to create functional and aesthetically pleasing benches. These are a symbol of sustainable awareness and the responsible use of natural resources. As a pioneer in sustainable street furniture design, BENKERT BÄNKE shows that good street benches are not worth a tree. Instead, with its modular, innovative benches made of durable stainless steel, the company offers an alternative future for street furniture in planning and architecture.

25.12.2024

Exhibitions

For a differentiated approach to the portfolio

Building design

General

Architects usually try to create finished houses, i.e. coherent works of architectural art for eternity. But does this claim stand up to reality? Should that even be the claim? Inspired by references from architectural history, art and anthropology, the young Stuttgart-based studio Kaiser Shen has developed various theses and tested them on the basis of its own projects. From […]

21.11.2024

Tens of millions for the unloved barn

Building design

General

The Museum der Moderne will be expensive. Very expensive. But what is scandalous is not that the budget was approved. But how it was approved. Here is the opinion of architecture critic Falk Jaeger.

Herzog & de Meuron’s Museum der Moderne has been criticized from all sides for years: it is far too expensive, the design is not appealing and the visual axis between the National Gallery and the Philharmonie is being obstructed. Now the budget committee of the German Bundestag has approved the cost plan for the project. How can it be that politicians are ignoring all the facts and public objections and approving the exorbitant cost plan for a new museum, while the other buildings of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation have long been in need of renovation?

Visualizations: Herzog & de Meuron

Rarely has a public building project in Germany provoked so much headwind as the Museum der Moderne. A shitstorm, you could almost say, if the contributions to the discussion were not of a serious nature. “The most expensive crusty bread in the world”, was the headline in the FAZ, referring to a metaphor used by jury chairman Arno Lederer. “This barn is a scandal” was the headline of another FAZ article, a scathing all-round attack that scandalized the location, architecture, size, environmental aspects and costs in equal measure.

Some points of criticism even overshoot the mark. The castigation of the sacrilegious proposal to block the line of sight from Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie to Scharoun’s Philharmonie (nicely illustrated by Stefan Braunfels in another polemic) is an all too superficial, silly stop-the-thief argument. Of course, a new building in this location would interrupt the view, but Scharoun had already planned it that way in terms of urban development, and Mies had to assume this in his planning.

Why would the view be so indispensable? If you want to see the Philharmonie, you can just step outside the door. In the beginning, when the Tiergarten was still free of trees due to the war, you could even see the Brandenburg Gate from the Neue Nationalgalerie, so what the heck.

The Tagesspiegel described the situation as “eyes closed and through”, and was right: the budget committee of the German Bundestag approved another hefty gulp from the taxpayers’ purse for the Museum der Moderne, thereby imposing a voluntary commitment for future increases in building costs from 364.2 million to a forecast 450 million euros. It certainly won’t stay at that, it’s more likely to be 600 million. But then the project will be under construction and there will be no turning back.

Dependence on private donors

The real scandal is how the Minister of State for Culture, Monika Grütters (CDU), has pushed through her personal “Grand Projet” against the most diverse reservations in the backrooms of politics. The political caste is making up its own mind about the project. Facts, pragmatic considerations and public opinion play no role. Perhaps the highly controversial architecture of the Museum der Moderne (“barn”, “ALDI discount store” etc.) would not have been a sufficient reason for a rejection, after all it was the result of a competition with a prominent jury. However, the urban planning problems, the reduction in the floor plan with the consequence of the expensive, difficult-to-calculate lowering into the extremely problematic Berlin building ground, should have given the housekeepers food for thought.

It is also annoying to see the submissive dependence on some private donors who had threatened to move their collections elsewhere. This is due to the fact that the foundation can hardly organize its own major projects, internationally attractive exhibitions, and is dependent on partners who are willing to pay.

Too many building sites

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is constantly being “gifted” new, magnificent museums by the federal government, which then have to be used and maintained. However, there are already decades of renovation backlogs at the existing houses. In addition, there is inadequate funding for qualified specialist staff and a pitiful acquisition budget of 1.6 million for all museums. None of this fits together.

The Foundation should finally be consolidating. Instead, the Humboldt Forum in the palace replica is to be brought back on track in 2020, the general renovations of the Pergamon Museum, the New National Gallery and Scharoun’s State Library are devouring huge sums of money and so on…

It’s no wonder that Berlin looks longingly at the popular major exhibition events in Paris, London, Amsterdam and New York. We want to play in that league too, we want to have something like that here again.