Blop.

Graduation project

Blop.

Blop. is a piece of urban furniture designed by Natalia Tarnowska. A set of five pads serves as a backrests and seats that can be freely composed in urban spaces. The design encourages informal sitting in different places, thus strengthening the users' relationship with the city, increasing their sitting comfort and providing a positive visual experience. The design is based on an analysis of the perception of time and space in terms of their impact on the quality of everyday experience.

Today's reality is characterised by constant volatility, fluidity, inconsistency and uncertainty. In an age of dematerialisation of experience, there is a growing need to embody and enhance it. More and more of our activities, rituals and interactions are moving into the immaterial realm, and our fast pace of life makes it difficult to establish authentic relationships with the spaces around us. Evoking the embodied nature of experiences allows us to give them a concrete location on our mental maps, rather than treating them unreflectively as spaces we pass by without thinking.

Blop. is an urban piece of furniture, a set of seats/pads for walls, stairs and windowsills. It encourages sitting in the city and promotes the habit of citying, a philosophy of informal sitting on elements of small architecture not exclusively designed for this purpose. Made of synthetic rubber, the items are characterised by high resistance to abrasion, resistance to harsh weather conditions, softness, good thermal insulation and the possibility of repairing a damaged section (which prolongs the life of the items).

It enhances the comfort of users and reminds them of the possibility of sitting in urban spaces, not just on benches. The aim of the project is to invite people to interact more consciously and freely with the space, creating a more personal, unmediated relationship with it.

Designer