Places to sit with the 4x4 Multi Step Block

The Terraforce 4x4 Multi Step block was developed to provide efficient and economical steps in conjunction with the company's' original retaining blocks. They soon became very popular not only for stairway access but to provide comfortable, practical seating arrangements at leisure amenities & school sport facilities.

According to Wikipedia, the term "placemaking" was coined in the 1970s by architects and planners to describe the process of creating squares, plazas, parks, streets and waterfronts that will attract people because they are pleasurable or interesting. Landscape often plays an important role in the design process.

One of the most basic features of this principle is seating. "This might not strike you as an intellectual bombshell," William H. Whyte liked to say, "but people like to sit where there are places for them to sit." Whyte's famous observations of plazas and parks suggested that people were not that picky about where they sit, as long as they could sit somewhere. But he also demonstrated that certain types of seating could revitalize a moribund place. Seating that is accessible, comfortable, well-maintained, and located in the right places is critical to successful placemaking.

Holger Rust of Terraforce, the company that designed the 4x4 Step Block, says: "Based on our client's comments, Terraforce blocks were found to offer one of the most cost-effective and durable methods for creating user-friendly seating arrangements at public sports and recreational facilities."

He adds that many examples have been installed during the last 25 years in all parts of South Africa, other African countries and on other continents. "The method lends itself to constructing small seating arrangements for pre-school facilities with, say 50 seats, to large scale arenas, capable of accommodating 20 000 spectators, as has been done at a gold mine in South Africa. With proper planning, unsightly and eroding embankments can be turned into something useful and pleasing to the eye". The company has also been involved in applications where it was necessary to combine some heavy duty earth retaining with a seating arrangement.

Rust adds that feedback over many years has confirmed that the combination of a row of Terraforce retaining blocks, topped with a row of reinforced 4 x 4 step blocks, is easier to install and approximately 30% cheaper than similar competing systems. Many budget constraints can thus be overcome. Interested parties are invited to contact Terrasafe, a design service offered by Terraforce.