Imagine yourself in a plaza at lunchtime, outside a city-centre office on a bright autumn day. People drift out with their sandwiches and coffees to sit on the benches, chat, check their phones and take a well-earned break. Nobody’s thinking about the seating plan or the positioning of the bins – because when street furniture works, you don’t really notice it.
We’ve supplied and installed a lot of street furniture over the years, and we’ve come to the firm conclusion that it does a lot more work than it often gets credit for.
What street furniture is actually doing
A well-placed bench influences whether an older resident can make it to the shops and back, because it gives them somewhere to rest on the way. The right street furniture gives a wheelchair user, or a parent with a pushchair, a reason and a place to stop. Pupils with a free hour at lunch need somewhere to sit that isn’t the kerb. Even the position of a bin has an impact on whether a space stays clean and tidy – and somewhere people want to spend time.
So it has a big influence on how people feel about a place. Whether it feels looked after. Whether it feels safe.
The availability and variety of street furniture helps turn public spaces from places that people simply pass through, to places that support social connection, where people spend time and develop a relationship with their surroundings and each other.
Get it wrong and the whole space feels slightly disconnected.
So we find it a bit odd that for something so important to social cohesion, street furniture is often one of the last packages to be specified, and one of the first to be value-engineered.
Why it gets left too late
We see the same pattern a lot. The architect understandably wants to deliver a stunning design, and specifies the ‘Rolls-Royce’ option. Then the project moves on, money gets spent elsewhere, and by the time anyone comes back to delivering the outdoor space, the budget that’s left bears very little relation to the original plan.
And so begins a last-minute hunt for something cheaper. But that’s a real shame because street furniture does so much work in forming someone’s impression of a place and their experience of it. In our view it’s actually one of the last things that should be quietly downgraded at the end of the programme – although clearly, it can be difficult to defend when the numbers come under pressure.
That’s why it’s important to talk to a specialist early in the process.
How we help
At Bellsure, one of the most helpful things we do happens before anything is ordered. Because we can manufacture bespoke pieces alongside our standard range, we can offer a like-for-like alternative when we believe a specified product won’t survive the budget review.
Sometimes that means telling a project team they don’t need the top-of-the-range option at all. The right solution isn’t always the most expensive specification – it’s about striking the right balance between meeting the design ambition and staying affordable when costs are under pressure.
Street furniture works best when it’s briefed early and treated as part of the design, not a line item added at the end. That’s because there’s a surprising level of complexity to your typical bench.
The detail behind a simple-looking product
A bench might look straightforward. But there’s a lot to consider.
Take fixings, for a start. A bench can be root fixed or surface fixed and the difference matters more than you’d expect. Root fixed means the legs are set into the ground and the surface, tarmac or block paving, is laid up to them, so the base is tidied in and the bench looks like it belongs there. Surface fixed means a baseplate bolted down onto a concrete pad. It’s quicker, but bolting something onto a slab rarely looks as considered.
Making that choice also changes who needs to be on site and when, which is the sort of thing that’s much easier to sort out early than to unpick on a busy programme.
Then there’s materials. In simple terms, most benches come down to steel, timber, or timber on a metal frame. We won’t use softwood for outdoor seating because it just doesn’t last – a few winters in and you’re replacing it. We use sapele and other dense hardwoods that hold up to the weather (and occasional misuse) for far longer – because for street furniture, specifying products that still look great in ten years is crucial for long-term success.
And it might seem obvious, but it’s worth pointing out that ‘bespoke’ takes time. A made-to-order bench or planter can carry a lead time of 12 to 15 weeks. If handover is eight weeks away, no amount of goodwill can make that work.
Lyde Green School, Bristol
Lyde Green is a nice example of what happens when the furniture is treated as part of the place rather than a line item. The brief settled on bespoke gabion benching – a series of one-metre stone-filled baskets, topped with hardwood slats, running in long, smooth lines around the site.
Robust, and sitting naturally against the landscape, it does a job well beyond the school gates. The seating at the front is there for parents and the wider community to use outside school hours, not just for pupils during the day. In a building held to demanding Passivhaus energy standards, it made sense for the outdoor elements to be built to last too.
You can read the full Lyde Green case study here.
Be sure it works before it’s built
When you’re specifying seating, shelters or bespoke street furniture for your next scheme, talk to Bellsure while it’s still on the drawing board. Send us the drawings, or call 03333 608301, and be sure the furniture will still look great in ten years’ time.
