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 enliven the public realm and provide seating immediately outside it’s harbourside bar.

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 to Bristol communities. 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 natural warmth and grain of the sycamore is left on show.

This was a collaborative design and build project under the banner of Culture of Building, a collective of five architectural practitioners with shared sensibilities based in Bristol. The founding members of Culture of Building are: Akshara Pulpa; Jed Baron (Studio Fieldwork); Richard O’Hanlon (Richard O’Hanlon Studio); Rory Corr and Brendan Higgins (OCH).