Street furniture - Definition and Overview

Street furniture refers to objects installed on streets and roads for various purposes, including benches, bollards, post boxes, phone boxes, streetlamps, traffic lights, traffic signs, direction signs, outside lavatories, fountains and memorials

General descriptions

• A bench is essentially a chair made for more than one person, usually found in the central part of any settlement (such as plazas and parks). They are often provided by the local councils or contributors to serve as a place to rest and admire the view. Armrests in between are sometimes provided to prevent people lying down and/or to prevent people from sitting too close to someone who likes to keep some distance.

• Bollards are posts usually of concrete or wood, with the purpose of preventing the movement of vehicles onto sidewalks or grass etc.

• Post boxes are found throughout the world, and range from the round pillar style found in Japan and the U.K. (the two feature a difference in that the Japanese version has a round lid while the U.K. version is flat) to the well-known rectangular blue boxes of the United States.

• Phone boxes or telephone booths are prominent in most cities around the world, and while ranging drastically in the amount of cover they offer users, e.g. many only cover the phone itself while others are full booths, are instantly recognisable. The wide-spread use of mobile phones has resulted in a decrease in their numbers.

• Streetlamps are designed to illuminate the surrounding area at night, serving not only as a deterrent to criminals but more importantly to allow people to see where they're going. The colour of streetlamps' bulbs differ, but generally are white or yellow.

• Traffic lights usually include three colours: green to represent "go", amber to inform drivers that the colour will alternate shortly and red to tell drivers to stop. They are generally mounted on poles or hang from wires.

• Direction signs tell the reader the way to a location, although the sign's information can be represented in a variety of ways from that of a diagram to written instructions. Direction signs are usually mounted on poles. Recently, illumination has started to be added in order to aid night-time users.

• Outside lavatories are used by males. They can be quite decorative.

Other information

Street furniture itself has become as much a part of many nations' identities as dialects and national events, so much so that one can usually recognise the location by their design; famous examples of this include:

• The red telephone boxes of Britain
• The residential post boxes of the United States
• and, The streetlamps and metro entrances of Paris.

The Tiergarten park in Berlin has a collection of antique streetlamps from around the world, both gas and electric.

See also

• Roads
• Furniture
• Park furniture
• Public art
• Door furniture
• Aquarium furniture
• Garden furniture

External link

• Helsinki Street Museum (http://www.hel.fi/kaumuseo/english/katumuseo.html)