Comments on: Anti-user seating in Oxford

By: » Blog Archive » State Alpha, on the architecture of sleep at the NAI in Maastricht

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:35:05 +0000

[...] Jermolaewa experiments with a variety of possible sleeping positions on a bench of the type of a growing number of public benches constructed so as to prevent people lying down or sleeping. The bench she [...]

By: noaddedsugar

noaddedsugar — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:52:13 +0000

Dear Peter,
I am glad you and others feel so strongly about this. So do I! Yes, it is disgusting when our attitude to the homeless is to deter them as a nuisance, rather than to pity them as a fellow human being.
You might be interested in signing this petition:-
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/sackoxfordsplanningofficer/

Keep protesting!

By: Peter, from oxford

Peter, from oxford — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:16:40 +0000

I dont know if you were aware that originally there were multi coloured lights intended to go under neath both sides of the benches on cornmarket so that not only could people not sleep on the benches, but under neath them. i have also heard from a oxford county council member that each bench cost around £30,000. as for the stupidity and complete ignorance demonstarted by the people that installed them, i am not suprised. Oxford council seems to want nothing more than to make massive massive mistakes. over and over agin. i honestly feel like crying when i think about the one way system.
im glad that people dont use the benches as they were intended. or maybe we were intended to sit on the back rest and put our feet on the seat ?

ohh by the way to the right of that starbucks in the picture is a really nice pasty shop. and opposite that is a really nice pub called the crown.
just incase anyone wants to go get something to eat and then go for a drink to drown their sorrows.

By: Dain Obermaier

Dain Obermaier — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:03:48 +0000

It does look like a lose/lose situation when you have to dissuade all potential users of bus-stop seating in order to dissuade the minority that you don’t want, but users of public transport are ultimately consumers really should be wating for buses in surroundings more sympathetic to their status, preferably somewhere with a checkout.

By: Shilpa

Shilpa — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:48:19 +0000

Hi,
Fabulous pictures and I couldn’t agree more!
In Mumbai, India there are arm rests on sets even in parks (though admitedly there are more comfortable than the curved seats) designed explicitly to prevent couples from “getting too close” in an act of moral policing!
And yes, like elsewhere in the world bus-stops are being re-designed to make sure the homeless can’t use them as shelters.
The anti-marginal citizens pogrom is well and alive in most cities in the world - its pretty scary really.
AS, for cars - we have 200 new cars on the roads of Mumbai everyday (no kidding!) so let me not even get started on the traffic and air pollution situation…
Shilpa

PS My own work has been on women and public space - if you like you can check out our website - http://www.genderandspace.org

By: (Anti-)public seating roundup at fulminate // Architectures of Control

(Anti-)public seating roundup at fulminate // Architectures of Control — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:03:31 +0000

[...] Ted Dewan - the man behind Oxford’s intriguing Roadwitch project, which I will get round to covering at some point - pointed me to a fantastic photo of the vehemently anti-user seating in Oxford’s Cornmarket Street, which was covered on the blog last year. When I saw the seating, no-one was using it (not surprising, though to be fair, it was raining), but the above photo demonstrates very clearly what a pathetic conceit the attempt to restrict users’ sitting down was. [...]

By: JOhn Curran

JOhn Curran — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 11:25:32 +0000

A Boston “guerilla artist” designed and installed a wooden bench in a local park even more uncomfortable than the ones featured here. It’s shaped like a “U”.

Here’s a radio story on it, with pictures:

http://www.wbur.org/arts/2006/60500_20060830.asp

By: Lean or mean? at fulminate // Architectures of Control

Lean or mean? at fulminate // Architectures of Control — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:42:13 +0000

[...] The Lean Seat bench, by Joscelyn Bingham, a graduating 3D Design student from University College Falmouth, is a ‘traditionally’ styled slatted wooden alternative to the (usually) unattractive anti-sit perches often found in public places. Note: the surface of the seat is very definitely tilted, and while the slats certainly increase the frictional effect, you perch on it rather than actually sit. [...]

By: Simstim

Simstim — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:42:08 +0000

Mike Davis in “City of Quartz” also includes benches that you can’t lie down on amongst a variety of anti-homeless features of LA’s downtown area in the early 90s.

By: Chairman of the bored at fulminate // Architectures of Control

Chairman of the bored at fulminate // Architectures of Control — Fri, 25 May 2007 11:12:55 +0000

[...] This blog often looks at methods for preventing people sitting down comfortably, usually in public space, from actual benches designed for this purpose, to features of walls and ledges which treat people like pigeons. [...]

By: Laconic

Laconic — Thu, 17 May 2007 14:58:19 +0000

I have always been under the impression that these types of seats in public areas are designed so that people cannot sleep there, especially the homeless. That isn’t a disregard for the public, but a design choice to ensure that the seating is used as intended.

By: We Control Your Street « KuiperCliff

We Control Your Street « KuiperCliff — Fri, 04 May 2007 12:37:50 +0000

[...] Anti-user seating in Oxford, UK (Dan Lockton). Given the dire state of British public transport, what could be more infuriating than being forced to wait, literally, on the edge of your seat for hours in the rain? Ostensibly designed ‘to deter vagrants’, this very common type of municipal architecture lumps in everybody as potential eyesores on the urban scene, without addressing the needs of anyone. Reducing all passengers - or more likely, in the depersonalising jargon of 21st-century Britain - customers, to the pejorative status of a rough sleeper, as problems, is cynical beyond belief, and makes all manner of assumptions about ‘normal’ people and the homeless alike. [...]

By: Mags

Mags — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 12:14:59 +0000

Part of the rational of the bus shelter rests is about water and maintenance.

Traditional bench seating has the problem that water inevitably got on them and pooled in the seat, makign them unusable in wet weather.

The shelter by my house has had the same ‘rest’ design but in plastic for about five years, and it is now cracked and damaged from late-night drunks kicking it. Metal reduces the chances of it being damaged. You can also fit a lot more people under the shelter if it is not taken up by people sitting.

By: John Kozak

John Kozak — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 22:17:21 +0000

I think London beat Tokyo to it. Vagabonds sleeping on the benches of the Thames Embankment are often mentioned in mid-twentieth-century writings, but for at least twenty years (I think) these benches have - in Chelsea at least - had the central armrest.

By: paul haine

paul haine — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 22:26:31 +0000

Those benches on Cornmarket street are fine. They’re just for leaning against - right on the other side of them are conventional seats for people who want to sit down properly. Plus, there’s quite a few of them all the way down the street. Also, at one end of the street, there’s a load of other regular benches. It’s just not all that bad, really.

By: Crosbie Fitch

Crosbie Fitch — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:44:09 +0000

How about improving the design?

Accomplish the anti-vagrant requirement, whilst creating an attractive public space?

How about a circle of inward facing seats (very comfortable ones), with a central fountain?

The fountain is usually off or subdued, but each hour it gradually increases in height and its outfall gradually gets closer and closer to the seats until it douses them with enough water to persuade the most recalcitrant of sleepers that it’s time to get up for a bit? And then the fountain subsides again for another hour.

Obviously the seats would need to be fairly quick to dry (shiny, non-horizontal plastic surfaces?).

I’m not saying this is the perfect solution, but isn’t there scope for better design that still prioritises the interests of the public over the misanthropic street architect’s sterile aesthetic and preference for function without actual contamination by humans?

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:40:08 +0000

Thanks for the comments. I think Rich has a very good point: some perch-style raised seating may indeed be intended for “seniors or anyone else who finds it easier to lean for a few minutes than get up from fully seated without assistance.” That’s admirable, when it’s an alternative to more conventional seating.

The perches on London Underground trains that Spiros mentions are usually pretty much a padded squab attached to the angled top of the fibreglass bulkheads at both ends of the carriage, and as he says, they’re useful for “semi-rest” in between stops, or for propping yourself against when the train’s too crowded to get a hand-hold. These are perches designed for user convenience - at some point, LT or the train builders (Metro-Cammell et al) decided that it would help users if the otherwise slippery bulkhead covers were padded to allow them to be used as perches.

Duncan’s point about brands advertising in situations and locations already imbued with negative emotions is interesting, since certainly some locations are cheaper than others, yet I doubt that the reasons for that are necessarily transparent to the advertiser. Often the prices would depend on how many people use the bus stop, what sort of economic group someone has decided to classify them as, and so on, but that doesn’t go so far as to look at why that particular audience are the only ones using the bus stop in the first place, and whether more people would use it if it were made more pleasant to use. I remember seeing a very home-made looking (lots of clipart) advert for loans, on a bus shelter in Leith, near Edinburgh, and thinking “You just don’t see that very often”; in hindsight, the rates for that shelter were presumably lower than others in the area, whether because it was badly located, or because it was in some other way undesirable to bus users.

Adrian’s idea of using unfriendly infrastructure as a 3D blog, an unpoliced system of commentary and reaction and discussion, is fascinating but I suppose that’s what some graffiti are anyway, and unlike blogging it’s not self-selecting. Everyone who walks past the graffiti’d wall has to see it, whether it’s wanted or not, and It would be preferable not to have the unfriendly infrastructure in the first place.

Having said that, imagine every piece of public infrastructure or building, or even everything is geotagged, or assigned a unique IP address. Then we could all have ‘conversations’ about/’at’ a location, which would show up on a hand-held PC - or maybe on the inside of our glasses - whenever we approached it.

By: Spiros Denaxas

Spiros Denaxas — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 10:12:55 +0000

You make a very interesting point indeed. Being a Londoner myself, I have been seeing these benches and unfortunately using them for the past months. I honestly cant tell why on earth they have designed them that way. The same design can also be seen on the Tube, in the Picadilly line and others. To be honest, I can understand why it would occur on the tube; its a short journey, it might not be worth it to sit down for a single stop, so you can semi-rest for a bit on one of the provided perches. For buses, it gets more frustrating since you might have to spend more time to wait for the bus, and eventually have to sit on one of those. Most of the times, I feel that i get more tired by trying to balance myself on one of them so I just give up and walk around.

That said, thanks for the blog, its a pleasure to read it everyday.

By: Duncan Drennan

Duncan Drennan — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 07:42:17 +0000

I wonder if advertising near these seat is cheaper?
I suspect that anchoring negative emotions due to the uncomfortable seating is not good for a brand.

By: ArchiSpass » Unsitzbar

ArchiSpass » Unsitzbar — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 06:49:43 +0000

[...] Unsitzbar DanLokton has a report on his ite about benches not to sit! The big question is, if you have to design such a bench could you be proud of it. Telling all your friends what you vae done? Sounds to me like a House with no windows(someone could watch you…). So be a good citicen and go ahead, to shopping mall. Assez souvent on trouve des bancs pour ne pas s’assoir. Quel design! Le pauvre qui doit faire un truc comme ca: On fait des etudes par l’ergonomie a la fac, et le patron demande un banc inutilisable pour la ville. on pourrait mettre le fric a feu de suite. Un banc pour ne pas s’assoir est tellement intelligent comme la zone pietone sur l’autoroute… Mais les villes le veulent. L’espace publique, est ce qu’il est encore publique? Photo de DanLokton [...]