We continue collecting news about interesting innovations in furniture production. These are, in the first place, concepts that were brought to life, dreams that came true and now are in a great demand. In this article we would like to bring up unusual design solutions and ideas of the last half-year. It is interesting that more and more furniture designers turn to typographics — their pieces are shaped like letters or punctuation marks.

On Monday architectural landscape elements produced by FCL were installed in one of the SFU buildings. Benches and flower pots from collection «Flourish» decorated the main hall of Oil and Gas Institute, which had recently been redecorated. The opening of the new building will be held in August. City and region authorities and also Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin are going to attend this event.

According to high requirements to the quality of city beautification elements it is necessary to provide durable and comfortable seats, benches and litter bin panels. The most practical, convenient and beautiful material for these purposes is natural wood that has been covered with special substances.

Among the collections of 2010 the series of street furniture «Gothic» occupies a special place: the designers of the company find the shape of the granite cheeks that reflect the form of the windows of gothic cathedrals directed towards the skies the most successful.

Once the capital of France was not a cultural centre of Europe. There were not any large trade ways or skillful craftsmen. All the goods were brought here from neighbouring provinces. Paris was just the capital of one of many rags of ground that formed a state. Civil wars and lack of food — that was the medieval France.

Together with the urban beautification projects the designers of FCL constantly work on creation of new elements of furniture and decoration of streets. In our work we try to proceed from the peculiarities of this or that topic or architectural idea. During the last 6 months we worked and put into production a number of new collections.

Designers and architects today find absolutely new approaches to lightning of city streets. It is not enough any more to just place the lightning facilities so that walking zones were lit up well. Lightning systems offered today can be built into street furniture, into pavement, into kerb stones.

Modern greenery systems are planters, lawns, flower beds, vertical planting systems. These conventional types are to solve particular tasks for formation of architecture of urban environment.

Nowadays landscape lightning is considered to be the most effective device of landscape design. Well-created landscape illumination gives to the area aesthetically completed view and helps emphasize architectural accents.

In 2009 FCL worked out a new series of multifunctional litter bins.

In the period when advertising graphics only started its way as a separate branch of art the municipalities and businessmen did not pay much attention to elements of urban environment that bore these advertising products. The main task for such constructions was meant to keep the advertising products safe and available. Thus, there appeared vertical stands with awnings where they placed newspapers and magazine articles.

If we discuss various types of litter bins, it will be necessary to single out litter bins for cigarette ends as a separate technological group of bins. Their peculiar functions determine their technological construction. Such litter bins should possess an ash-tray — a container for cigarette ends separated from the main bucket. It is inevitable because litter can catch fire if the butts are not quenched.

There are much more litter bins various in shape than benches or other types of urban furniture. It is connected with the fact that litter bins can be installed near big complexes and reflect their architecture, or they can resemble animals. Small size and opportunity to increase the number of functions lets designers create unlimited quantity of shapes.

There is no the most reliable way to protect urban furniture from acts of vandalism. In any society there is somebody who would like to try the furniture for durability. That is why in designing the elements engineers have to stick to a number of requirements.

The most intriguing peculiarity of urban furniture designing (benches in particular) is the absence of any strict technological requirements neither to the quantity of seats nor to the materials. That is why designers from different countries can boldly experiment with the shape of benches at the same time bearing in mind comfort of townspeople.

One of the directions in designing of cheap furniture is production of furniture of plastic and cardboard. To increase ecological compatibility the manufacturers use recycled material — cardboard, plastic, saw dust.

In many cities bicycle has become a full participant of street traffic. A lot of companies install complex bike racks at their office buildings. As a separate article in urban beautification programmes now they include measures on creation of cycling areas and installation of bike racks. Different companies offer various designs for bike racks.

We already mentioned new concepts for urban furniture where they use illumination in the furniture construction. It serves for higher comfort of urban areas in the night time. As a rule, illumination of such kind is for paths and pavements. Lower illumination has several functions: it marks the piece of furniture in the dark and makes the pavement surface visible.

Urban culture is not only a number of distinguishing features of streets, buildings and architecture. It expresses the architecture of environment and the mentality of the people who live in it. Modern design is based exactly on the notion of integrated space. No wonder young architects create urban furniture that possesses the characteristics of the environment they are placed into.

Modern trends in landscape and urban design more and more often use curvilinear shapes.

Aspiration for ecological compatibility and principles of made-up power find application not only in advanced researches and alternative power stations. A lot of design concepts for life can also use solar, wind and water power.

In September 2009 International Park(ing) Exhibition in San Francisco took place. Little parks and squares for urban environment were pitched in the city streets. According to the rules everybody can take part in this Park(ing) Day. The main thing is to have the desire to show your creative idea in beautification of the surroundings.

We constantly follow the innovations and new trends in the sphere of urban design and never miss interesting new species of street furniture. Lately various design offices and studios offer furniture models that combine several functions.

Problem of fine looks for outdoor furniture is really acute. Most streets are decorated with various furniture elements. As a rule, these elements have different appearance and style and sometimes they do not even give enough comfort to urban environment.

As an additional service in outdoor furniture design FCL offers embossing of logos and symbols on either stone or wooden furniture elements. All patterns are embossed with laser on a special equipment that lets us guarantee accuracy of lines and deepness of embossing.

For beautification of Diplomat On Michurinskiy Avenue Community of business class in Moscow the building company has made a decision to use elite street furniture by FCL Company.

Technologists of FCL GROUP has finished a test assembling of modified chairs and double litter bins.

FCL GROUP initiated a business trip of a delegation from Krasnoyarskiy Region to Germany and France. The trip will take place from October 28th till November 5th, 2009 . The delegation membership will include heads of large building companies, leading designers, architects and planners of Krasnoyarsk.

The bin capacity is 2 litre increased. The metal lid is now fixed on the hinges and thanks to this it will become easier and quicker to take out the trash and clean the bin.

Modernization of urban furniture of collection «Econom» resulted in appearance of double stone litter bins with intermediate stone and metal elements. It is convenient to install such stone litter bin with double capacity on squares and in parks with high passableness and thick foot traffic.

Granite flower pots and litter bins of collection «Astana» were used for decoration of area at the business centre «Europe» (Krasnoyarsk City)

Three months ago designers and production engineeers of our company received the task to work out a new frame for the series of sofas City . As before, the basic requirement was the necessity to keep the simplicity of the article's assembling and at the same time to diminish the packing size as much as possible.

September 6th, 2008, opening of a new trading and entertaining centre OPTIMA will take place in Krasnoyarsk City. On the four floors of three buildings there will be clothes departments and perfumer's shops, boutiques of famous brands, office rooms. The adjacent territory and patio are decorated with flower beds, lawns, stone flower pots, for visitors' and employees' comfort there are benches and litter bins installed. All the above mentioned kinds of street furniture are produced by FCL Group and have grey granite cheeks that match the colour of the building socle facing.

For the City Day with the powers of FCL Company substitution of architectural landscape elements was carried on in the central streets of Krasnoyarsk, the exploitation period of these elements was over 5 years. Old sofas, benches and litter bins were substituted with models of street furniture of series «Classic». According to the order of substitution of architectural landscape elements the restoration of more than 100 elements will be carried on within one or two months. After that the street furniture that has been restored will be returned to the city streets.