NORD Architecture

Urban Green Space is a project related to NORD’s Ceramic Ashtray in the sense that it re-thinks form and function at the periphery of buildings in the wake of the smoking ban. People are now forming clusters in spaces once unoccupied; outside office blocks, pubs, restaurants and shopping centres. Does this suggest a challenge to designers to consider these spaces as sites for intervention. NORD have a general interest in the everyday, whether it be the domestic environment or the city, NORD borrow from it, re-constituting parts, materials, objects and interactions in new and unexpected ways. In our present day, public furniture does little to encourage social interaction. With this in mind, our starting point for this project is the traditional picnic bench.

Through an imaginative re-design and the application of technology, the new furniture piece will invite enquiry, and engagement with the people who interact with it. The seating would be heated, utilising the most up-to-date technology.

The technology would take the form of a Ground Source Heat Pump (This is comprised of lengths of pipe buried in the ground, in a borehole. The pipe is usually a closed circuit and is filled with a mixture of water and antifreeze, which is pumped round the pipe absorbing heat from the ground).