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    On a clear, warm day in Bexleyheath, bees visit the rooftop gardens at the Eastside Quarter.

    The British honeybee is a marvellous little creature. A tiny, compact black and gold body flits from flower to flower, pollinating plants and vegetables and fruit trees with a ceaseless focus, historically supplying over 70% of our pollination requirements in the UK. An insect no bigger than a thumb-nail is responsible for pollinating the food that makes its way to our tables – and has done a remarkable job even as its habitats have changed beyond all recognition. Bexley, which seasonally attracts swarms of bees when the weather warms, is a smallish borough by London standards – but nonetheless, the bees come to Bexleyheath, and so there must be places for them to settle.

    The Eastside Quarter rooftop garden is about the same size as an allotment. Over 500 new homes are tucked away in this one building, outfitted with a gym and concierge service, and two rooftop gardens spread out across different levels. Several of our freestanding AKRI planters sit in place, soaking up the sun and filled with food for the bees: salvia, lavender, meadowsweet. Just beneath the planters, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them close, there are benches, set deep into the walls, to sit and watch London change with the years. Each one is long, flat, and dark, comfortable to sit on, and no competition for the view.

    history-of-seating

    A history of sitting

    The very first public seating saw gladiatorial matches. Outside of houses in Pompeii, residents sat and spoke over lunch, unaware that, in a handful of years, they’d be enshrined in ash. Renaissance palaces, designed by architects paid in fat golden coins, were not complete without stone seats in the walls dedicated to the public, as a show of wealth and generosity towards their constituents. Further on in history, public benches were posts and concrete blocks, slabs of heavy wood piled on misshapen stone, organic and rough-hewn, cast-iron cut and shaped into the whorls and spirals.

    A whole history of material sciences has played out in the creation of the public bench: from stone seats and moss benches overgrown with foliage to the wooden plants repurposed from a ship hard-won in battle, to the cast iron created and folded in a factory meant to mimic the hours-long work of a master blacksmith, and finally to what we see today in fibreglass and weather-resistant wood. 

    What has not changed about the public bench is its intention: a place of refuge, unobtrusive, to pause at before home.

    Seating beauty

    Of the public benches that have survived well into this era – the ones now earmarked as historical findings, the ones that tell us Romans also liked to sit and talk the day away and that there were spots in France where one could enjoy the wildflowers – what is stunning to consider is they survived as snapshots of artwork as much as a public utility. It is a remarkable human trait that we beautify the areas we use the most, without affecting the function of its intended purpose. 
    (That’s a conversation for another day, another bench). 
    Bench

    But that beauty and purpose live in unity. One cannot thrive well without the other. And place, of course, is everything. A modern smart bench, with all its geometric proportions, has its place in the heart of London, providing a resting place for busy workers on their way to the next meeting – but it can draw attention to itself in a place far older and more ancient and resonant with the centuries of its existence. 

    In 2001, Brian Bagnell sat on a public bench in an 11th century cathedral and sent out an email. 

    Widespread public wifi was still a few years away, and the bench provided four outlets for people to plug in their laptops directly into modem jacks – entirely for free. 

    Twenty-three years on, the bench has aged well, even though there’s no longer any need to connect your laptop through a wire to access the internet. It looks the same as any other wooden bench in the United Kingdom, well-worn and well-loved, with little to alert the public that it was once the pinnacle of possibility. 

    Veeva Sol
    And, twenty-three years on, we now have technology that can do more than just provide a connecting point. Solar-powered benches such as our Veeva Sol range can help you charge your phone; others serve as a place to monitor the air quality around you; more, available in other locations, have maps built into their displays. 

    However, like the AKRI planters above, place is everything. Sleek, angular smart benches would look out of place in an 11th century cathedral, but a simple wooden bench retrofitted for purpose makes perfect sense, and has worn without dating itself. Technology will age regardless; furniture will age regardless, and it can do so with poise and grace. 

    Check out our Veeva Sol range
    AKRI

    Ageing gracefully

    Both Veeva Sol and AKRI are products built to age gracefully – but in the case that there is a need for replacement, their modularity makes it far simpler to fix without changing the entire unit, cutting down on waste produced and keeping the place for people to sit viable for much longer.

    Children will stop to take their lunches on these benches, and the elderly will take a minute from the shopping to get their breath, and friends who haven’t met in person in weeks will take the opportunity to talk on a bench overlooking the park.

    As they sit, days and weeks and months in the changing weather, they will wear the years on them, they will become outdated, they will be replaced by better versions, and repurposed for something else in service of the community – another park bench somewhere else, a planter bursting with native flowers, a bin to keep the roads clean. What will remain of these benches may become something else, but in that place where it stood there will be another park bench, ready for the resting. 

    There will always be yet another place to sit.