Futian is a collection of smart urban furniture with embedded AI technology that allows residents to interact with their city more than ever before.
Urban infrastructure and public furniture help define the personality of a city. In New York, WiFi-enabled charging hubs provide a moment for tourists to re-calibrate before jumping back into the swell of the crowds. Then, the cobblestoned streets of Paris typically host standalone, public restrooms that offer relief to unhoused individuals and tourists alike.
Designer: inDare Innovation
Depending on the most urgent needs of the city, the public furniture will change. In an effort to transform the city of Shenzhen into a brand identity, inDare Innovation Studio created a collection of Intelligent Urban Furniture called Futian to help better define and respond to the needs of Shenzhen residents.
Futian represents inDare’s goal of creating a “world-leading city model, which is intelligent, human-centered, and sustainable.” Each component of the Futian collection comes with embedded AI technology that allows users to interact with its interface to learn more about the city and daily conditions regarding topics like the weather and traffic.
The most interactive of the Futian furniture pieces is the 24/7 Smart Services module that appears like a touchscreen kiosk, allowing users to learn about traffic, weather, and safety concerns, while also connecting citizens to customizable services like GPS. Other components lean into minimalism more than smart technology.
Take the modular street lamp that strips the conventional streetlamp into its most elemental body. The street lamp primarily functions as an overhead light for dark streets, but it also comes equipped with features like 5G micro stations and climate monitors.
Then, an atmosphere park light is strictly meant to provide ambient lighting for citizens to safely enjoy parks at night.
The last two pieces of the Futian collection find accessibility through comfort. The park bench is topped with a wooden surface that exudes warmth for all city residents. InDare especially hoped to create a city bench that could even be enjoyed by the city’s unhoused residents, ditching the cold steel, partitioned build of conventional city benches.
Finally, a pair of User-Friendly Trash Bins trade a lock and key removal process for a tilt mechanism that allows the city’s sanitation workers to remove the trash with a single movement.
