Tinopolis
Seating and Performance Area for Llanelli Town Centre

As part of Llanelli Town Centre’s multi-million pound regeneration programme, Studio Response curated and managed a programme of public artworks for Carmarthenshire County Council in partnership with Jacobs and Alun Griffiths Contractors aimed at creating a contemporary response to the heritage of Llanelli in addition to creating a unique public realm for the local community, visitors and traders. Award-winning art and architecture studio DPQ  was commissioned to design a sculptural seating area at the busy pedestrian junction of two main shopping streets and the St Elli shopping centre.

A busy, sociable space with many different people passing through, DPQ created a series of seating arrangements for a variety of social and solitary scenarios. The form of the benches responded to Llanelli’s history of tin production and developed the idea of the ‘fold’, which was a critical part of tinplate production. In this process steel bars were fed through a series of rollers, compressing them and repeating the process until the desired gauge was produced. The benches DPQ designed derived from the concept of unfolding these plates, both in the plan and sectional profiles of the seating, which differs along its length, and allows it to become a perch, table, or loveseat simultaneously.