What mes­sage would a city send with benches that play your favour­ite music, bins that roam around and chairs you can move? We explore big ideas that arise from the smal­lest details in social spaces.

There’s a reason why Andrew Shoben, dir­ector of UK col­lect­ive Grey­world, is obsessed with the park bench:

“I’ve always seen the park bench as a good meta­phor for good urban space. You sit on them, you fall in love on them, you eat your sand­wiches on them, you get drunk on them, you carve your name and your girlfriend’s name on them…”

Top: Bins and Benches in Cam­bridge, Bot­tom: Invis­ible in Burn­ley | Pho­tos cour­tesy Greyworld

Grey­world have focused on the humble bench in no less than nine works (and you can read about some of their other works in our inter­view with Andrew Shoben). They pose ques­tions in play­ful ways about things that are often over­looked or seen as mere details in a big­ger pic­ture, and invite us to think about how we share spaces, how col­our and sound affect our moods or per­cep­tions, and how we can be nutured or stim­u­lated by the simplest things in those “grey” lim­inal spaces we move through every day.

Those works have included World Bench, in which tech­no­logy allowed people to share a seat and strike up a con­ver­sa­tion with oth­ers around the world, and Col­ourstops, in which Grey­world cre­ated bus stops in Brad­ford with heated seats that com­pli­men­ted vis­it­ors on their out­fits. In Bins and Benches seats roamed around a square in Cam­bridge, occa­sion­ally burst­ing into song.

“The bins and benches had their own per­son­al­it­ies, the benches were very social, grouped together with their friends,” Shoben says, while on the other hand, “bins have a lone­lier life. They like to strike poses in a bit of space. When you think about it they get rub­bish thrown on their heads all day long and then on a Tues­day someone comes along and rips their insides out. Its not a nice life, so they’re a bit more solitary.”

It’s not just a cute idea: mov­ing (and mov­able) seat­ing makes a state­ment about the role users play in shap­ing the form of a space. While Greyworld’s benches make their own decisions about where they want to be, who decides where we sit in other, less magical, pub­lic spaces?

Bry­ant Park’s move­able chairs and read­ing lib­rary | Top: Photo by Ed Your­don, Bot­tom: Photo by JB Parker, Flickr

As Andrew M. Man­shel notes in a recent City Journal art­icle “A Place Is Bet­ter Than a Plan”, giv­ing people con­trol over how they use a space – includ­ing the power to move seats and adapt a space to their own needs – sends a power­ful message:

“People like to con­trol their own space, and mov­able chairs allow them to do just that. Mov­able chairs let people face one another and inter­act in dif­fer­ent ways, not just the ones that land­scape design­ers have in mind when they arrange fixed fur­niture. Hav­ing chairs scattered around sends a mes­sage of trust that people won’t steal them.”

Man­shell refers to the work of Wil­liam H. Whyte, the Amer­ican urb­an­ist behind the redesign of Bry­ant Park in New York City. Lauded as one of the most suc­cess­ful urban regen­er­a­tion pro­jects ever, Bry­ant Park was trans­formed in the early 1980s by open­ing it up to the city – remov­ing hedges, adding tables and mov­able chairs, and by open­ing cafes, host­ing events and invest­ing in land­scap­ing – and now, an open air lib­rary and free wi-fi access. It is now the most densely occu­pied urban park in the world and described as com­pletely crime-free, a dra­matic change since the 1970s, when it was nick­named “Needle Park”. The lav­ish improve­ments to the park were an expres­sion of trust in the people of the city that has paid dividends, a mes­sage to the users of the space that they were safe, wel­come in the space, and free to use it in many ways.

If some­thing as simple as flex­ible seat­ing can change per­cep­tions, what is pos­sible when we give people room to really exer­cise their creativity?

boombench from michael schoner on Vimeo.

The Boom Bench, cre­ated by NL Archi­tects, allows users to play music from their mobile phones to turn a park bench into their own DJ booth. As Chris O’Shea notes on his blog Pixelsumo:

“Since the Walk­man and the Boom Box music became mobile. People carry music and play it over head­phones, or, more pop­u­lar every day, over small speak­ers in their cell phones or iPods. Espe­cially kids like to go pub­lic, they like to share. The music extends their per­son­al­ity onto the streets…

“Play­ing loud music in pub­lic will either attract or repel people. As such it will shape the place. Either you start an instant party or mark your ter­rit­ory. The music will become an acous­tic sign”.

Boom Bench rocked the streets at Exper­i­menta Design Ams­ter­dam as part of the Urban Play pro­ject, “an inter­na­tional pro­ject that believes this street-level invent­ive­ness, energy and innov­a­tion is a win­dow into a new form of cre­ativ­ity and urb­an­ism in the city.

Benches in Amerikamura, Osaka | Pho­tos by Jess Scully

Most dis­cus­sion about urban plan­ning takes place at a massive scale, but as the Urban Play pro­ject recog­nises, innov­a­tion in every day life usu­ally hap­pens at street-level, and at a human scale, closer to bins and benches than plan­ners’ obses­sions with precinct-sized mas­ter­plans would suggest.

As Andrew Man­shell notes, small-scale inter­ven­tions are appeal­ing because they’re afford­able, but best of all, they’re flex­ible – offer­ing people their a chance to adapt a city to their own uses, and room for the form of a city to evolve and change as time goes on.

“Small changes are appeal­ing for many reas­ons. They’re cheap, for one thing. Also, what works can be eas­ily expan­ded, and what doesn’t work can be as eas­ily ter­min­ated or altered. One suc­cess­ful food con­ces­sion can become two; an unsuc­cess­ful stall selling local crafts can be replaced; a planter made from a mater­ial that dis­col­ors or chips can be replaced with a bet­ter one.

“Con­trast that with grand schemes, which can attract broad oppos­i­tion and be sub­ject to com­plex polit­ical, logist­ical, and fin­an­cial obstacles. Once an elab­or­ate design has been com­mit­ted to, back­ing away from it—or even alter­ing it—becomes both polit­ic­ally and mech­an­ic­ally com­plic­ated. Fur­ther, plan­ners have a lim­ited capa­city to pre­dict how people will respond to their designs. The lar­ger the pro­ject, the more likely unin­ten­ded con­sequences become, and the more dif­fi­cult it is to change course.

Do you think changes at street-level have an impact on how you see your city? Have you encountered any new ideas to make your pub­lic spaces more flex­ible and social? Share your thoughts below to join the discussion.