We've really blown it in the outdoor bench department, humans. We've been sitting around--or not sitting around--on damp park benches for centuries now, when there's an obvious low-tech design fix right in front of us all this time. Seriously. How often have you set off for the park after a rainstorm (or a snowstorm) to enjoy the freshly cleared sky, nature's Etch-a-Sketch having wiped away the smog and left that post-storm charge hanging gloriously in the air?
Only problem is, all the benches are drenched, so you can't really sit down to enjoy the moment. Or how about you're looking to spend a Sunday having a family picnic, and sure it rained yesterday, but it's a beautiful day today! Too bad all the picnic tables are still sopping wet. Well, there's a fix. And frankly, we should have thought of it about a hundred years ago.
The super-simple innovation, perhaps the first bona fide improvement in bench technology in a century, should probably have been a reality long before the age of the nanotech and cloud computing and concentrated solar power. That being the case, immense credit goes to Korean designer Sung Woo Park, who finally stood up and spoke out against rain-stained butts with design; with his clarity of vision.
It's simple: Rolling benches. There's a crank. Wet bench panels get rotated down to the bottom. Dry ones go to the top. You sit on the dry ones. Human ingenuity, people. And the design will be more important in coming years, as our climate-changed warmer atmosphere carries more water vapor, and drops it more readily upon us.
Now, even so, humankind need never suffer from wet jean-ass again.