RDLA designed this Harmony Bench as a response to Boston public art request for Grove Hall. Grove Hall faces similar challenges that plague the modern inner city including income disparity, rapid gentrification, unemployment, youth crime and funding for programming and education. Now, more than ever, we look to our youth to express themselves with strong positive voices and activism to create a harmonious vision and inspiration for the future of the Grove Hall.
Through this urban lens, we design an interactive piece where youth can sit together to share their stories, express their ideas, ambitions and hopes and make harmonic music together. Set within a “grove” of honey locust trees, the “Harmony Bench” seeks to promote a harmonious community for the near future.
Intended to create visual interest from the street, the Harmony Bench captures distant attention with its light airy mixture of materiality and a shady setting. Drawn into the park to view the sculpture, visitors interact with the bench’s stainless steel or painted metal pipes. These “tuning forks” are struck with attached mallets to create harmonious tones symbolizing children’s voices of future hopes and dreams. The bench’s curvilinear shape allows youth to sit, visually connect with each other and promote discussion through voice and music. Dafodils whimsically planted below the sculpture renew the Community’s spirit each Spring with an emerging bright yellow carpet.
The Harmony Bench is intended to be a temporary installation, but can be modified for permanency if desired by the Community.
RDLA designed a series of site furnishings inspired by manufacturing elements of the South Works Complex, currently the Blackstone Park in Worcester, MA. Manufacturing elements are featured in these designs to celebrate the cultural heritage of the area. This single steel wheel holds the “wire” that anchors the bench in place while also creating a central armrest in this bench design.