Landscape Forms is proud to introduce the Contour line designed by Ignacio Ciocchini, the company’s first collection of high-design, highly durable tables that can comply with existing Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design.
"With Contour, we challenged ourselves to design a public site-grade table that’s beautiful, flexible, and also fully ADA compliant,” says Landscape Forms Director of Design, Ryan Heiser. “Championing inclusivity and enabling more people to enjoy more outdoor experiences are fundamental to who we are at Landscape Forms, so to achieve this in a way that is also aesthetically inspiring is an especially proud moment for us.”
To head the design of Contour, Landscape Forms enlisted the expertise of Ignacio Ciocchini, an award-winning New York City-based industrial designer recognized for his excellence in product design for cities, streetscape design and master-planning with a keen focus on accessibility. "Between his work with multiple New York City Business Improvement Districts, his transformational restoration of Midtown Manhattan’s Bryant Park, and his dozens and dozens of ADA integrations all across the city, Ignacio Ciocchini was the perfect match for Contour,” continues Heiser. "He knows everything there is to know about ADA compliance and creating enduring beauty in public outdoor space, so his expertise runs throughout every aspect of these tables.”
"You’ll find a lot of tables claiming to be wheelchair-accessible in the market today but, if you check the specifications, you’ll quickly understand they don’t fully comply with existing ADA regulations,” says designer, Ignacio Ciocchini. “The user experience those products offer people with disabilities is either null, or at the most, very different from the experience they offer people without a visible disability. So, for Contour, we focused relentlessly on understanding this problem and the existing regulations, designing for elegance and simplicity, and importantly, ensuring that the experience must be the same for all users—no shortcuts allowed,” Ciocchini continues. “This combination led us to create a product line that I believe is one step above any other tables on the market today."
A first in the outdoor site furnishing space, Contour is a system of mutually compatible components that can be combined to create different ADA compliant tables that address a range of site needs and can appear all throughout a given setting. Central to the design of Contour is the idea of achieving true inclusivity, adapting the design to create a universal user experience that is the same for both non-disabled users and users with a disability. "When you approach a setting of tables—whether it’s a bistro, a restaurant or a park—what if, instead of having that one ADA accessible table over there in the corner, every table was accessible to everyone? That’s exactly what you can achieve with Contour,” adds Ryan Heiser.
The Contour system includes round, gently rounded square and gently rounded rectangular tabletops, each constructed from powdercoated steel, and each offered in two different sizes. The tables are then completed with a choice of four powdercoated aluminum legs or a surface-mounted pedestal constructed from either high-performance concrete or cast aluminum.
In the four-legged versions, Contour's surface gently floats over rectangular, pill-shaped legs that protrude slightly from the edge of the table. The legs are positioned at 45-degree angles that flare out toward the user, creating a welcoming gesture, aiding ingress and egress, and lending Contour its unique appearance. In Contour's surface-mounted pedestal versions, a pill-shaped center column ends in a robust truncated-cone base that creates an elegant transition between table pedestal and paving surface. Throughout Contour’s iterations, the design specifically eliminates under-table obstructions and provides an optimal height, width and depth of knee clearance to ensure all spaces at the table can be ADA compliant.