Hasta La Ideas

“We believe in the power of design to elevate public spaces,” states Michigan-based Landscape Forms, a furniture company that focuses on a ubiquitous, but often overlooked, branch of design (seen above): Site furniture. Their thick product roster includes “transit shelters, benches, tables, chairs, umbrellas, litter/ash receptacles, planters, bike racks and bollards [in] metal, wood, recycled plastic, molded polyethylene, solid-surface acrylic, polycarbonate and fiberglass,” all tackling the challenge of how to make something beautiful, yet rugged enough to stand up to the elements and general municipal abuse.

With literally hundreds of products, the company hires designers from fields ranging from landscape architecture to interior and industrial design. They’ve also just inked a deal with BMW Group Designworks USA, who will provide designs for “a range of essential furnishing elements for urban transit cores” called Metro40, which will include “furniture, shelters, lighting, and amenities.” No actual photographs of the line are yet available, but below is a product rendering of some of the planned designs.

“Bringing great design to public, seemingly anonymous spaces such as transit shelters promotes a very positive, personal impact on people’s moods and daily quality of life,” says Verena Kloos, President, BMW Group DesignworksUSA. “Urban gentrification projects such as the new High Line park in Lower Manhattan demonstrate the importance and value of making cities more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing for their citizens, and the exploration of this dynamic made the Metro40 project with Landscape Forms particularly compelling for DesignworksUSA,” she concludes.

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