dancing bench reimagines public furniture at Concéntrico 2025
Soft Baroque brings motion to the ubiquitous with their Dancing Bench installation at Concéntrico in Logroño, Spain. The kinetic public bench is part of an ongoing series by the studio that explores how familiar objects can be recharged through unexpected mechanics and sensory experiences. Installed in an urban plaza for the festival, the piece appears as a deceptively simple sculptural volume, until it moves, activating the body and disorienting perception.
The structure is made of parallel planes that manually rotate when weight is applied, creating a continuous ripple that subtly distorts space and sensation. As the user sits and begins to sway or shift, the bench sways too, generating an interplay between optical illusion and physical engagement, with the movement smooth, soothing, and slightly uncanny.
all images courtesy of Josema Cutillas
soft baroque brings motion to the ubiquitous
With backgrounds spanning object design and visual art, Nicholas Gardner and Saša Štucin of Soft Baroque have built a practice on collapsing boundaries between typology and image, and utility and illusion. Their Dancing Furniture series embraces the everyday object or infrastructure as a performative element capable of inviting attention, companionship, or contemplation. At Concéntrico, the Dancing Bench is activated with a small theatrical motion that asks people in public space to move a little differently, and to reflect on how objects behave around them.
Like many of Soft Baroque’s works, the Dancing Bench draws from a visual language of mid-century modernism while pushing material logic toward conceptual ends. The crisp geometry, repetitive surfaces, and minimal palette give way to a subtle strangeness that emerges only in use, with the design toying with expectations of public furniture, transforming a passive place of rest into a shared instrument of motion. ‘When we dance ‘with’ the bench, sit on it and rotate, it is a mediative and soothing experience, like a rocking chair or hammock,’ explains the team.
Soft Baroque unveils the Dancing Bench at Concéntrico
the installation brings motion to the ubiquitous with their Dancing Bench
the kinetic public bench sways and twists when you sit on it
part of an ongoing series that explores how familiar objects can be recharged through unexpected mechanics
it invites people in public space to move a little differently, and to reflect on how objects behave around them
the structure is made of parallel planes that manually rotate when weight is applied
the movement is smooth, soothing, and slightly uncanny
drawing from a visual language of mid-century modernism while pushing material logic toward conceptual ends
project info:
name: Dancing Bench
designer: Soft Baroque | @soft_baroque
location: Logroño, Spain
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