What kind of objects, spaces and images can encourage slowness within sixty minutes?

60 minutes sofa/bench is a project to slow down human metabolism in the home environment. This artefact, created by Alastair Fuad-Luke, is a continuum of seating opportunities, from upright to inclined. It mirrors a continuum of time experiences according to activity, thoughts and states of being. As our body accommodates to the physical form of the furniture our perception of time and our engagement with the real world in the proximity of the sofa/bench shifts. These perceptions might vary from ‘real’ time to ‘slowed-up’ time to ‘reversed time’.

Each extremity of ‘60 minutes sofa/bench’ represents our contemporary binary world of time where an upright sitting position is analagous to productivity (real time, the dominant commercial time paradigm) and the inclined seating position to leisure (contemplative time, a whorl or eddie in the dominant time paradigm). This metaphor is deliberately broken down as the sitter(s) moves along the sofa/bench. Occupants can mix any activity with any seating position, and so establish their own time environment.

’60 minutes’ is part of The Slow Collection, a collection of furniture, lighting and other artefacts for the home, being developed by designers at Tempo, a sustainable design network, for commercial production.

tempo sustainable design >

SLow (Alastair Fuad-Lukes's slow design site) >