Benches & Poufs

Benches & Poufs

All three benches are drawn at the same 220 × 80 × 45 cm, and that is the point: one footprint, three completely different material propositions.

80 cm deep is not an ordinary bench

Most benches are 40 to 45 cm deep. At 80 cm these are twice that — you sit back on them rather than perch, and they work as a surface as much as a seat: at the foot of a bed, along a hall wall, in a lobby where people set bags down. It also means they need real floor. In a corridor under about 1.6 metres clear they will not sit comfortably, whatever their length. At 45 cm the seat is chair height, which lets a bench of this size go to a dining table as seating as well as stand on its own.

Three treatments

Fiona is the hard-surfaced one: a marble top on slender metal legs, with leather as the only soft element. The stone takes the wear and the veining is unique to the slab; the legs are slim because a 220 cm stone slab is heavy and the frame has to carry that span with thin sections and still stand without a tremble. Felix is the soft one — a run of separate tailored cushions on an open metal base. Separate cushions keep each one firm where a single 220 cm cushion would dip in the middle, and they can be re-covered one at a time rather than the whole bench at once. Bravo is the most hand-worked: curved upholstered sides with leather straps worked across the top, where the padding has to be built to the curve and the material eased round it without a gather.

Materials and ordering

Dimensions are customisable on request. Any of seventy-six leather shades across twelve families — genuine leather only, no faux leather in any Sitdesign product — or fabric, with your own fabric (COM) accepted, so a bench can be matched to a sofa or a bed headboard in the same room from the same batch of hide. Stone selection and metal finish specified per project. Made in our Istanbul workshop.