Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad's street furniture made from upturned bakers' crates forms part of an exhibition opening this evening at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens.
The Church Street Bench is formed of wooden diamonds cut from construction spruce-ply, which fit flush into the latticed face of the found crates. Each set of tiles consists of twenty natural and twenty cyan pieces designed to fit into a crate from the Sunblest bakery.
The benches take their name from a street in Paddington, north west London, where the crates were found, conceived, designed and then re-deployed into a market environment.
Making use of an item often omnipresent on London's market streets, the bench creates a decorative and solid functional surface that extends the vernacular use whilst capitalising on the ubiquitous nature, temporary ownership and availability of the plastic bread crate.
The benches were originally made in an edition of 12 sets as part of the London Festival of Architecture exhibition Anatomy of a Street by Eszter Steierhoffer.
Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad's previous work includes these boxes which can be hung as shelves on a wall from a single pin.
See more outdoor furniture on Dezeen here.
Here are some more details from Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad:
AUBERGINE:NW8
This project aimed to explore and further understand the complex interactions and community that surround and benefit from the Church Street Market in Paddington.
Phase one - The Church St. Cookbook: Employing a market stall amongst the daily traders, the cross-culturally popular staple ingredient "the aubergine" was exchanged for home-cooking recipes (we received over one hundred recipes form twenty one nations. Phase two - AUBERGINE:NW8: A one-day-only street restaurant was installed within the market where a selection of the recipes turned into dishes and the public into collaborators. The restaurant was visited by members of the public, westminster council chairmen, community officers, gallery curators, artists, and curious by-standers, discussing the current state of the neighbourhood and it's pending change with their mouths full.
Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad is a designer with a background in photography. Since graduating from the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art in 2008, he has established a practice that focuses on social by-products of design, and the role of designer as collaborator and translator with industry, institutions, and the public. His London studio outputs projects in the form of photography, public interventions, interior spaces, recipes, furniture and products.