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Street furniture from Gebal Co.

Benches, bollards, street lamps and bus shelters, street furniture is an essential part of the urban fabric. Lauren Hills reports on how developments in the middle east could inspire designers in India.

Street furniture is one of those design elements that is frequently overlooked but very much needed to make up the whole. Remove them from the scene and people immediately notice that something is missing even if they are hard pressed to explain exactly what it is.

Both functional and attractive, street furniture is a driver of pedestrian activity: bollards act as safety elements; benches create rest stops; bus stops provide shelter.

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And street furniture adds permanence to a city intrinsically helping to create a sense of place. “Street furniture can make a city look more finished, adding important touches that infuse the areas around the buildings with a sense of belonging; it can make a city feel more complete,” comments Richard Kornmayer, export manager of urban decor design company Fundicio Ductil Benito.

CHANGING TIMES
The growing attention to design detail in the Middle East is something that could transfer to India, as designers go for a holistic approach to projects, say suppliers.

“Before there wasn’t much thought about street furniture,” says Alex Charawani, managing partner of Gebal Co LLC, which has supplied street furniture for Nakheel’s Dubai Waterfront and Aldar’s Al Raha Beach project in Abu Dhabi. “People would just put a bench here and a bench there. But what we are seeing now in discussions we have with Aldar and other big developers is that they are saying ‘This is our building, this is our design theme, and we want to continue it’. We are discussing materials and not only in terms of the quality – the physical thing that you sit on – but in terms of what would look best in a particular area.”

Suvarna Jeetendra, managing director of  outdoor solutions manufacturer and distributor Bluestream agrees that interest in street furniture is growing.

“There are landscapers and developers who are careful with their selection of ornaments for their projects and communicate with us well ahead of time, and at the same time there are firms that only start considering street accessories in the last stages of development thus giving us very little time to design, supply and install the furnishings,” he says. “Nonetheless, overall there has been a genuine increase in the consideration for community spaces and developments across the region.”