by Ann Withanee — July 15, 2011—Landscape Forms, a leading North American designer and manufacturer of site furniture, introduces Windmark, a chair and table collection designed by award-winning architect, Margaret McCurry. Windmark shares materials and visual qualities with the Lakeside bench, McCurry’s inaugural design for Landscape Forms, while it explores new expressive possibilities in outdoor furniture. The collection, explains Landscape Forms, is the latest in its ongoing collaboration with leading landscape architects, architects, and designers to create and develop site furniture of outstanding design and quality.
Windmark expands Landscape Forms’ offering of tables and chairs to address high-design furnishings for public/private spaces. In scale, aesthetics and sense of fun, Landscape Forms says Windmark is perfect for defined spaces with special panache: resorts, outdoor restaurants, museum plazas, high-end residential settings and rooftop terraces.
The collection consists of a chair with and without arms, tables with two distinctly different bases and a variety of tops, and an ottoman, which can serve as a table, a seat, or a footrest and adds an intimate, comfortable touch. The geometrical shapes and softening ornamental detail of the collection provide a fine complement to contemporary architecture and offer designers another inspired Landscape Forms solution for creating a sense of place.
McCurry takes inspiration from a variety of sources; architecture, landscape, iconic furniture, history and poetry. For Windmark she drew on the cast iron benches and fences with cutout forms she saw in New Orleans as a child. “I like to mix materials and bring ideas from the past into the present and future,” she explains, “so the work is not just a copy of a historic style but suggests that you’ve seen it before but don’t quite know where.”
Windmark derives its forms from cutting and folding metal in inventive ways, a few deft strokes creating forms that are simple but arrestingly new. Tables have aluminum strap or origami-fold sheet metal bases with a choice of rectangular, square or round tops in glass, wood or powder-coated steel.
Chairs and ottomans have aluminum strap frames and patterned steel or wood slat seats, and chairs have specially designed stainless steel seat and back fasteners that add detail. The peaked profile of the strap base and the folds of the origami base, devised as practical solutions for protecting the metal from corrosion and wear, provide visual compatibility, so that elements work beautifully together.
Steel origami table bases, ottoman tops, and chair seats and backs are incised with whimsical patterns based on natural forms. Optional reversible fabric-covered cushions are attached by a tab with magnet that slips between the metal seat and frame and neatly fixes to the bottom of the seat. The combination of aluminum and steel make Windmark elements visually light but heavy enough to wear well and hold their ground in the wind. Windmark meets Landscape Forms’ stringent quality and testing standards and is backed by the companys three-year warranty.
Margaret McCurry, FAIA, IIDA, ASID, ALA, is a principal in the architecture and design firm of Tigerman McCurry and the recipient of numerous awards. She was named The Designer of Distinction in 2002 by the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID).
For more information visit the Landscape Forms Web site as well as its FMLink ad.
