Palm Bench

Authors’ Comment

PALM / PLANE TREE

The proposed piece of urban furniture is part of an ongoing process of learning through experimentation, developed over several architecture summer schools at the Cantacuzino Estate in Florești, whose historic park has thus become an open-air laboratory.

The bench unfolds from a common trunk into several curved arms, like a palm with long fingers, almost figurative in form. This gesture is deliberate: it responds directly to the historic plane tree beneath whose canopy it is placed. The branches of the tree extend above the arms of the furniture, which open out towards the lawn like roots, or like an outstretched hand welcoming visitors. Seen from above, the drawing becomes clearly legible—as a hand, a tree, or a river with tributaries. At eye level, it becomes a long, low landscape for sitting.

The plane tree is what gives meaning to the form. Its shade determines where people gather, while the bench simply gives them a place to settle within it. The curved metal arms terminate in substantial timber beams: the curve guides the eye, while the wood receives the body. Each branch creates a different way of sitting—face to face, side by side, or in small groups—without imposing a single way of being together.

The intervention was conceived from the outset as temporary. Point foundations, formed by small concrete blocks, leave the ground almost untouched and allow the roots of the plane tree to remain undisturbed. Nothing is fixed to the tree, and no continuous concrete foundation is poured. Reversibility becomes a form of respect for a site of historic value and, at the same time, a freedom for experimentation: one can dare more when the intervention can also be withdrawn.