If you’ve ever sat through a discussion or film at any of Boston’s historic colleges, you’ll recognize the problem MIT had at Simmons Hall: An “array of simple, flat upholstered benches set on cast-in-place concrete steps” proved difficult for the various types of events and gatherings that happened there — musical and theatrical productions, film screenings, and lectures, and more.
To solve this, MIT reached out to Cambridge-based modern furniture designer Adam Simha of MKS Design to “come up with a seating solution that would add warmth, flexibility, and comfort to this important space.”
And that’s exactly what he did.
Simha partnered with Ben Durrell “to develop a system of unique and richly colored upholstered single seats and benches that responded to students’ desires that called for seating that was easily reconfigurable, structurally stable, and provided full back support.”
The seating comes in 48″ wide benches and 18″ wide seats. They’re held down with a heavy duty hook and loop, so the seating can be rearranged on the fly.
The design team developed a seat whose inner structure automatically shifts the center of the sitter’s weight forward, allowing for tremendous stability without any compromise in flexibility. In addition, thanks to the anti-static plastic material used for the one piece bottom skid and rear kick plates, the seats even repel dust.
