The giant benches that make adults feel like children

Fed up with designing cars for the elite, Chris Bangle wanted to create something for everyone, and something more in tune with nature. One idea he hit upon was a bench - a giant one, far bigger than a normal park bench - and together with his wife, Catherine, he set up The Big Bench Community Project.

The benches are also so big that there's plenty of space to share them, and to interact with friends or strangers.
There are now 19 privately financed benches, thanks to the Bangles' efforts, many in the Langhe, the hilly area of Piedmont, in north-west Italy, where Clavesana is located. But you won't find an app with a map to guide you to each location - part of the Big Bench experience is to discover them, and the views they offer, like treasure in a hunt.

"They're quite hidden and not that easy to find," says Angelo.
"I imagined they'd be closer to the road but this is much nicer because you have to seek them out.
"The idea is lovely because you really feel like you become part of the landscape, which is something that doesn't normally happen. Sitting up here you ask yourself, 'Why am I so small and out of proportion?' You know it should be that way but you often take things for granted and think that you drive everything. Up here in this context you question this, and have to admit that you are actually less significant."

"It's true what people say: when you get up here you feel like a child again. I dream of having the time to sit here, relax and enjoy the view."

"It's a very simple concept," he says. "Contemporary art is often difficult to understand but in this case the emotions are the same for everyone. It's not like when you say, 'Ooh, I can see a lion in this,' and someone else says, 'I can see a tiger.' Here it's the same for everyone, and I think that's its greatest success."

Corrado and his friends discovered the big benches while out walking and decided, as a community of 40 deaf people, they'd like to construct one. Their group self-financed with the help of other deaf communities - some donations coming from as far afield as Sweden. Many of them put their hand prints underneath the bench in different coloured paint.
Corrado hopes the silence of the place will encourage hearing people to think about what it would be to be deaf.
"This place can be useful for hearing people to come up and try not talking, try signing and understand what it means. And it's very connected to nature so you can come here and hear nothing," he says.
He has told his wife he would like his ashes to be scattered here when he dies.

Situated at the top of a high hill overlooking their village, they financed the bench, a matching picnic table just behind it, street lighting, and a water fountain for thirsty big-bench pilgrims.

"I like the bench a lot because it's really high up," she says.

Photographs by MariaGrazia Moncada
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