Watershed Benches

Watershed is a values-led cultural organisation centred around cinema and creative technology, located within a Grade II listed warehouse on Bristol’s harbourside.  The new benches are a small, but vibrant intervention designed to improve engagement with the venue and provide seating immediately outside it’s harbourside bar/café.

 

The primary construction materials were procured from Bristol Wood Recycling Project, a not-for-profit Social Enterprise that redirects waste wood from landfill and provides affordable, salvaged timber.  Reclaimed pallet wood, regularised in BWRP’s workshop, was the primary construction module used to form the planters.  These precise, machined components sit in contrast to the waney edge sycamore planks which form the seats. An environmentally friendly oxide red paint coats the pallet wood, with the clean sawn ends left exposed.

 

The design process was led by materials  and resources available, with the principal decisions made during a single design workshop in BWRP’s timber yard.  Inspired by the stockpiles of timber in BWRP’s yard, the planters are simply formed of 100x50mm stacked timber sections, secured with threaded rod and lined with recycled plywood.