Stone Bench Competition
The City of London Corporation, the Cathedral Works Organisation (CWO), Albion Stone Plc and the Mason's Company are working closely together to promote and encourage young innovative architectural design and stone masonry skills by co-sponsoring a competition to design a seating form.
Four finalists have been chosen for their Riverside Walk seating design. Architecture students Priscilla Fernandes, Yakim Milev, Barney Bonner and Richard Phillips were selected from 19 others who sent in their designs for the London location as part of the Architecture Student Design Award 2009.
The competition was designed to provide an opportunity for selected trainee masons to develop their stone masonry skills. Students were asked to:
- produce a striking, innovative 21st century seat design, which can be carved from a single block of quarried natural stone (3m ³), with or without slabbing and jointing,
- enhance its setting and complement the Riverside Walk,
- be visually engaging, functionally useful and well crafted,
- consider long-term performance characteristics, such as weathering, safety and ease of maintenance,
- take account of skateboard prevention measures.
It will be located on The Riverside Walk, which is part of the Thames Path, extends from Victoria Embankment to Tower Pier on the north side of the River Thames. The City of London's Riverside Walk Enhancement Strategy is aimed at creating a high quality riverside walk to provide both a public and private space in a coherent manner.
The finalists will present their designs to the judging panel in September. The panel consists of Deputy Christine Cohen OBE - Chairman of Planning and Transportation Committee (City of London Corporation), Michael Poultney (Albion Stone), Adam Stone - master mason (CWO), Julian Limentani (Mason's Company) Victor Callister (Planning and Transportation Department, City of London Corporation), Martin Rodman (Open Spaces Department, City of London Corporation) and Sam Dawkins & Donna Walker (previous winners).
The winning design is to be carved by apprentice Stone Masons from CWO during October and November and will be located adjacent to London Bridge. The bench will be unveiled by the Lord Mayor of the City of London on 3 December 2009.
Albion Stone, a fourth generation family business pride ourselves on having a helpful and skilled workforce as well as modern and traditional manufacturing process to enable us to produce the highest quality Portland Stone with minimal environmental impact.
