Landscaper - Bas Smets

The research for the design of an outdoor bench becomes the opportunity for Bas Smets and Eliane Le Roux to explore the biospheric processes between planetary life and solar energy. Living matter uses the latter to produce ever more organic material. Most of this former life gets deposited and compacted into sedimentary rocks. The 'biospheric bench' is composed of carefully selected stones, former life petrified and former rocks metamorphosed. Cut to an elementary triangular shape, these stones are tied together by two elastic bands while kept apart by three star-shaped printed elements, both derivates from fossil fuels. Thirteen stones form a basic module. Different modules are combined to create complex figures, resembling a crystalline structure. Much like soil samples, the stacked pieces of the bench tell a prehistoric story of living matter transformed into solid material, as a compression in time and space of biospheric processes.

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