Last week we gave a presentation to a local youth group in the neighborhood, there were probably about 30 kids from age 9 through age 17. For the presentation I was working with Mike and Mike on seating options. Our seating explorations tended to gravitate towards adjustable seating. I know adjustable seating and moving parts are generally a bad idea, however I like the idea of people users being able to adjust their surroundings and have a hand in programming the space. If you’ve seen the documentary ‘The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces’ by William H Whyte you know what I’m talking about when I say that to feel ownership over a space people generally want to arrange their seats themselves. The documentary films a series of plazas in New York City and watches how people interact in different situations, one of the situations is loose chairs and what he found was that when people have the option of moving a chair they will lift it and move it, even an inch, before they will sit in it giving them a sense of ownership and place. So that was the idea for adjustable seating in the shelter. We also used the streetcar system as a case study for moveable seats in a public setting. The streetcars here don’t loop around to go back the other direction, when they reach the end of the line they just switch the end they’re driving from and head back. Since the car isn’t turning around there is a driving platform on each end of the car and the seat backs in the car slide to the other side so people will be facing the right direction.
We developed three different seating ideas. One was taking a traditional bench and dividing it in two pieces. Then giving those pieces the ability to rotate and slide so people can sit together or apart, facing each other or away from each other. The second was to again use a traditional bench form but allow planes to rotate out of the mass providing more seating areas. Lastly we incorporated seating into a wall system. The wall would be a series of horizontal planes stacked up, then certain planes would pull out, like drawers, to create seating, footrests, shelves and places to lean. This idea provides the most variety of seating, which is something that relates back to the porch idea because a porch has several different ways you can inhabit it – steps, chairs, railings, etc.
The kids at the meeting really liked the idea of adjustable seating but also pointed out the problems – pinched fingers, maintenance, broken parts, etc. I think that our instructor really wants to put the ax down on the adjustable seating idea but he can’t because the community keeps liking the idea. We made mock up of the wall idea, trying to work out some of the problems and trying to see if it would really work. The pull out catches a little but I think that when we plane the wood boards it will be smoother. I’m really worried about the cantilever but we discussing the possibilities with an engineer who I’m sure thinks we’re crazy.
No comments:
Post a Comment