Designposts: Alba Elezi | King’s Cross Design District

Alba’s Designpost is part of a wider collaboration between LDF, the American Hardwood Export Council, and three leading British furniture makers Benchmark, Sebastian Cox and Jan Hendzel that pays tribute to London’s neighbourhoods and presents the potential of an underused and highly sustainable material – American red oak. Combining sculptural beauty with practical function, Alba Elezi’s design takes the iconic gasholders of King’s Cross and reinterprets them as shared sculptural seating – in much the same way as the now-defunct gasholders themselves have been reinvented as a public park. In order to reflect the holders’ dark iron finish, the oak was ebonised using an iron solution. The Designpost is located in Coal Drops Yard, less than 100 metres from the structures that inspired it and is one of ten that can be found in locations across London; Islington, the Design Museum, Shoreditch, Southwark South, Brompton, Waltham Forest, Greenwich, Park Royal and Clerkenwell. Made by Benchmark Furniture.