Landscape Forms wins prestigious design award for Metro40 product line

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Jun 05, 2010

The comprehensive Metro40 collection includes shelters, benches, bike racks, bollards, display structures, litter receptacles and innovative LED lighting. Designed in collaboration with BMW Group DesignworksUSA, Metro40 is engineered, developed and manufactured by Landscape Forms, North America’s leading designer and manufacturer of outdoor site furniture. Based on research conducted in North America, Europe and Asia, Metro40 reflects Landscape Forms commitment to addressing critical issues in outdoor environments and its mission to enhance outdoor spaces.

Arno Yurk, Vice President Design, Landscape Forms, explained, “Metro40 is an ambitious undertaking for Landscape Forms. It expands our focus and scope of products for the urban environment, addressing the critical area of transportation-related design with leading edge technology, in terms of both functionality and the environment. Metro40 includes new products for us, such as lighting, and grows our presence in the urban center with a global platform and products that have universal design value and appeal.”

Since 1954, I.D. magazine’s Annual Design Review has recognized the best in product, furniture, graphic, and environment design, from the iconic to the obscure. Throughout the years, this annual showcase has chronicled the evolution of design, and highlighted its impact on the material and visual culture. Each year, the featured work is chosen by a jury of leading practitioners, who, along with the I.D. editorial team, focus the abundance of submissions into a clear survey of the state of design. The resulting overview is published in the July/August issue of I.D. magazine — the Annual Design Review issue.

Landscape Forms Metro40: Designed For People In Motion
People are on the move all around the globe and cities face special challenges managing people in motion. Environment, health, safety, comfort and quality of life are in the balance. Landscape Forms recognizes that urban centers require more comfortable, attractive, higher-quality facilities and amenities if they hope to increase the appeal of public streetscapes and transportation. The company developed Metro40 for city planners, architects and landscape architects to help elevate the livability, quality of experience, design appeal, and overall image of urban streetscapes and public transit systems.

The collection combines sculptural form, an extensive range of functions, elegant engineering, robust construction and sustainable materials. It is simple but expressive, and sophisticated in a universal way that makes it appropriate for many different settings in many parts of the world. Metro40 products are compatible, but not identical. A keynote element of the design is the mobius-strip frame of the shelter, benches and lighting that expresses movement, continuity and connectedness. The other products in the collection share dynamic shapes with flowing surfaces, accelerated curves and rotating edges that give a sense of visual movement.

The Metro40 collection includes:

• CONNECT - A pedestrian-scale transit shelter, designed for bus or light rail
• COLLECT – Litter and recycling receptacles
• REST - A bench in aluminum or aluminum and wood
• RIDE - A bike rack
• STOP - A bollard
• HI GLO – A 12-feet tall LED Pedestrian Light
• LO GLO – A 3-feet tall LED Pathway Light
• SHOW – A display structure designed to house advertising, signage and transit info

About Landscape Forms
Since its founding in 1969 Landscape Forms has earned a reputation for excellent design, high quality products and exceptional service. The Landscape Forms U.S. headquarters and manufacturing facility is located in Kalamazoo, Michigan with sales offices throughout North America, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and Southern Europe. Landscape Forms collaborates with renowned industrial designers and consultancies, landscape architects, and architects to design and develop integrated collections of products that address emerging needs. The company has an installed base of products around the world. Clients include municipalities, transit centers, corporate, college and health care campuses; and familiar brand leaders such as Boeing, Cisco Systems, Disney, Sprint, American Airlines, Herman Miller and Nike. Landscape Forms was recently named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the Top 15 Small Workplaces in the US. www.landscapeforms.com

About BMW Group DesignworksUSA
BMW Group DesignworksUSA provides design strategy, research, design development, sustainability consulting, brand communications, 3D modeling, and color, materials, and finish to many of the world’s great brands. In addition to being the creative partner to BMW Group, which includes BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, additional BMW Group DesignworksUSA clients include Boeing Business Jets, HEAD, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, Saeco, and Sony. The company was founded in 1972 by Charles W. Pelly in Malibu, California, and acquired by BMW Group in 1995. Since December 2009, President Laurenz Schaffer has led BMW Group DesignworksUSA’s strategy and operations, which includes studios in Los Angeles, Munich, and Singapore. With global resources and clients across a spectrum of forward-thinking industries, BMW Group DesignworksUSA has an unparalleled understanding of consumers and the world of design that surrounds them, both today and many years into the future. In 2010, Fast Company magazine ranked BMW Group DesignworksUSA as the world’s “#1 Most Innovative Company in Design, and among the Most Innovative Companies for 2010”. www.designworksusa.com

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