CANVAS

CANVAS – Harnessing the potential of urban furniture as a driver of sustainability, inclusion, and local creativity

Challenges: Across Europe, communities face challenges of infrastructural decay, unequal access and lack of essential public amenities, and safety concerns arising from insufficient lighting or hazardous spatial conditions. Urban furniture, including benches, lighting, and other fixtures of public space, is often treated as a purely functional, industrial product in public procurement. Its design, material selection, and production are generally detached from local needs, climate adaptation, and cultural context.

Solutions: CANVAS aims to accelerate the transformation of European public spaces by developing a new European quality standard for street furniture that bridges design excellence, community participation and environmental performance. Together with communities, cities, designers, researchers and place makers, the project will co-create and test accessible, circular and climate resilient solutions across seven European pilot cities. Guided by New European Bauhaus principles, the pilots act as living showcases that strengthen local identity, foster social cohesion and enhance environmental performance in different social and climatic contexts in Europe. The project establishes and validates a EU benchmark for street furniture that transforms shared spaces into vibrant, inclusive and climate-resilient places.

You can keep up with project progress on the LinkedIn page.

G!E are leading Communication and Dissemination activities.

Coordination: Gudrun Haindlmaier, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, gudrun.haindlmaier@ait.ac.at