Rich Holland has designed multiple skateparks around the world, and he’s now busy working on an inclusive new park in Southampton. The new park is meant to elevate and revamp Southampton’s skating scene, and Holland has rejuvenated the space with a series of super interesting furniture objects!
Designer: Rich Holland
Holland has been known for his skateboard-centric designs and landscapes since 2000, and one of his recent works involved strategizing and designing the Nike skate landscape in the brand’s Netherlands headquarters. And, his collaboration with Skate Southampton involves renovating and transforming the pre-existing space at Guildhall Square, and creating a skating area that is much more open, spacious, engaging, and visually and aesthetically pleasing! And Holland recently unveiled one of the pieces – the PSFF Bench. The PSFF Bench is a prototype and is a furniture piece with a sculptural appeal to it.
It is 3D printed using concrete! Besides adding character to the square and enhancing its overall appeal, the bench aims to function as an off-the-shelf solution for providing public skateboard-focused furniture to places all over the world. 3D Printing is truly gaining more momentum and popularity than ever. Designers and architects all over the world are now adopting 3D Printing for the creation of almost all types of products and structures. It’s a technique that is being widely utilized in product design, owing to its simple and innovative nature, so it’s no surprise that it’s being introduced to the world of sports as well.
With this project Holland hopes to bring iconic sweeping skate landscapes, and minimal concrete design to the skating world of Southampton. It includes a collection of 3D-printed furniture pieces that are wholly focused on skating. The objects are created using concrete, and no other material. The 3D-printing process used to produce the pieces was brought to life in collaboration with the Eindhoven University of Technology and contractor BAM Infra. The process is supremely optimized and produces premium-quality construction products. The furniture is quite sports-centric and has a rather minimalistic and unassuming appeal to it, allowing the material, the form, and the sturdiness to speak through.
