Furnitubes seating for transformed shopping centre
Visitors to the acclaimed Bullring shopping area in Birmingham, which replaced a Brutalist architecture 1960s complex, can now find extra seating amid attractive planters, supplied by Furnitubes International.
The site, which has been at the commercial heart of Birmingham since the Middle Ages, was already the place to go for market shopping before the first Bull Ring Shopping Centre was constructed more than 50 years ago. This was the first in the UK to mix open-air market stalls with a new indoor shopping complex. However, the centre’s isolation within ring roads connected only by pedestrian subways did not prove popular.
Eventually the redeveloped and renamed Bullring opened in 2003, featuring indoor malls and new exterior public realm focused around the Church of St Martin in the Bull Ring. The development includes an iconic Selfridges store, which won a RIBA Award for Architecture. There is a split level piazza offering attractive views over the church and the city beyond, but initially the surroundings were rather austere and there was only limited seating, built into some steps.
Furnitubes’ answer to increasing seating provision and softening surroundings was 12 seating modules and 18 planters from the RailRoad range. All units were assembled on site in one overnight session. The informal arrangement features seating connected to heavy planters, none of which required permanently fixing down, so giving the flexibility of being able to easily rearrange the products or add further modules in future.
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Furnitubes International
Tel: 020 8378 3200
Email: sales@furnitubes.com
Web: http://www.furnitubes.com