Benito — user-friendly street furniture

Spanish street furniture company Benito  has unveiled its latest collections for equipping our cities’ streets with pieces that are unusually user-friendly yet still of the highest standards in terms of quality, innovation and good design.

Not long ago it unveiled its Citizen collection, designed by Eugeni Quitllet, who this year scooped the Designer of the Year prize at Paris trade fair Maison & Objet. His collection comprises a comfortable bench and versatile rubbish bin. Both have a strong identity and are designed to coexist harmoniously and naturally with a city’s occupants. Their aesthetic is organic, thanks to a symbiosis between the delicate beauty of nature and strength needed to withstand wear and tear. This is the first collaboration between Benito and Quitllet, who calls himself a “disoñador” — or designer-dreamer. He takes an instinctive approach and has been described as innovative, inquisitive and a technophile. He believes design should be exceptional; he sees every object as a challenge, as a curious look inside a material to discover what forms might be concealed within it.

Another of the company’s collections is Essentials, which was co-created by Ramón Úbeda and Otto Canalda for the public lighting sector. It comprises practical lights which are easy to assemble, install and maintain and whose design is flexible and cost-effective. This collection offers various styles and mounting brackets yet all share the same light engine, developed especially for this project using state-of-the-art LED technology.


Play, a collection for children designed by Javier Mariscal — one of Spain’s most internationally renowned designers — is the perfect complement to these designs. The first two pieces of the collection, which will be augmented in future, are a swing and spring rider which feature some of the designer’s most famous characters, such as Piker and Julián, as well as cars and ships which he is also passionate about. They inject a colourful, playful touch and dash of Spanish character into both public and private gardens and will surely appeal to grown-ups and kids alike.

Benito inherited a century-old casting and forging machinery business and has since become a world leader of urban equipment that boasts a presence in over 50 countries. It offers four product lines — Light (street lighting), Urban (street furniture), Covers (manhole covers and grates) and Play (playgrounds and sports equipment) — and its catalogue includes over 6,000 items.