Strawberry Smart Bench at Smart Green Spaces

Strawberry Energy is proud to announce that our Strawberry Smart Bench was selected among the ten most successful entries at “Smart Green Spaces” competition organised by The City Centre, in partnership with the City of London Corporation and Brookfield.

This competition is part of a programme of activity including an exhibition and a related series of events including panel discussions and hackathons entitled ‘A Smarter City’. Since Strawberry Smart Bench is among the ten best projects, it will be presented at the exhibition from April 25th to July 1st.

The very first model of Strawberry Smart Benches was launched and tested in Canary Wharf at
the end of 2015. Following the success of this trial, we have installed ten more at high-footfall city locations across Islington and Lewisham in 2017. During this period, we became aware of many aspects of our current industrial design that needed change and upgrade. This experience helped us iterate and start developing a new industrial design for our Benches. Our mission was to create a new SSB that will be more in line with the needs of open and green places in London.

A very important aspect of this exhibition for Strawberry Energy is the fact that we will present the newly redesigned and improved concept of the Smart Bench for the first time in public. We are very proud of the whole team and looking forward to presenting new and improved Strawberry Smart Bench at the “A Smarter City” exhibition.

New industrial design of SSB is a well-thought-out design that is constructed using high quality
and robust materials. The structure is of modern appearance and elegant in its form. As SSB has
a similar footprint as a regular bench the impact on the public realm is minimal. The contrast
between the light seating part and dark steel construction is in line with requirement for tonally
contrasted structures to alert visually impaired visitors to the seat’s location. The height of bench enables it to be visible to all the people in vicinity. The height of the seat is in line with required height of seating points as well. Thus, the simple, minimalistic and elegant design of SSB blends into the streetscape and enhances the local distinctiveness. The colouring and form of the bench are architecturally complementary to the surrounding environment and do not compete with it.

Milos Milivojevic, Master of Architecture, explained technical details about the new design:

“Strawberry Smart Bench consists of a tiny steel bench coated with wood plastic composite material and main steel structure that intersects it. The steel structure consists of the same cross section horizontal and vertical element playfully connected. The horizontal element covers the part of the bench in a very elegant way and supports the thin-film glass solar panel located on top. Vertical element is a hardware for complete device technology and it also represents an area intended for local information. Recess in a vertical element makes safe place for charging cables, USB ports and Qi chargers.”

Strawberry Energy has always been dedicated to promoting smart technologies and modern design in harmony with our environment. Being listed among the best and taking part at this exhibition is an immense opportunity to present our vision and reach more people. We hope to share our mission with professionals from the fields of environment, architecture, design and new technologies or representatives of local governments, councils and also environmentally conscious corporations who are aware of the challenges of future landscapes and have the good eye for design, technologies and architecture.