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Photo collection: Public seating

What a seat says about who is expected. From tables that keep a place open, to benches that close the circle, to seating built to be left.

  • Round table on a single centre pedestal in the sand of a playground in Växjö, with three chairs around it, one of them a raised baby chair, and a fourth place left open. Play houses and a slide behind.
    Växjö. Three chairs, one of them for a baby, and a fourth place left open. Nothing is attached to the table, so a wheelchair, a pram, or another chair rolls straight in.
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  • Round wooden table ringed by a continuous octagonal bench on bark mulch under a tree. The bench runs the whole way round with no gap.
    A closed circle. The bench rings the table without a gap, so reaching a seat means stepping over it. Nobody is named, and the shape still decides.
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  • Round wooden picnic table in a sandy playground with gaps cut between the attached bench sections. A climbing frame and slide behind.
    A round table with gaps cut between the bench sections. Anyone on wheels rolls in among the seats, no special place marked.
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  • Round wooden picnic table with gaps between the bench sections, on grass in a park with bare trees behind.
    A round table in a park, with gaps cut between the bench sections. The open places work just as well on grass.
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  • Long wooden picnic table on leaf-covered grass below Kalmar's old stone city wall. The attached seating varies along the table, bench sections with backrests and sections without, and two open cutouts in the seating line face each other near the middle.
    Kalmar, below the old city wall. One table, several ways to sit: backrests here, none there, and two open places facing each other near the middle. Whoever rolls in sits among the others, face to face.
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  • Wooden picnic table on a metal frame under a large tree in a Växjö park. The tabletop extends well past the benches at the near end, leaving an open place with no bench in the way.
    Växjö. The tabletop reaches past the benches, leaving one place with no bench in the way.
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  • Picnic table with a galvanised steel frame on a gravel square between apartment blocks. The tabletop extends beyond the benches at the near end, leaving a free open edge. Orange steel-cube pergolas behind.
    A housing square. The table is longer than its benches at one end: one open place, built in without a word.
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  • Semi-circular wooden bench in a shopping mall, built from light vertical slats with integrated planters and an open front.
    A mall bench built as an open arc. Sit on it, roll into it, lean on it. The open front leaves a place inside the curve.
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  • Blue-framed benches, tables and bench-boxes on artificial grass forming a parklet in a Swedish pedestrian street, historic facades behind. An accessible-parking sign stands at the edge of the turf.
    Sundsvall. A summer parklet: benches, tables and boxes on one level floor, open from the street.
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  • Summer pedestrian street in Sundsvall with artificial turf, picnic tables, a small wooden playhouse, and two dragon sculptures riding pink bicycles. Cafes and stone-town facades along the street.
    Sundsvall. A street furnished for children. The dragons ride bicycles. The invitation assumes a child who can too.
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  • Danish public bench named Sammenbænk on a pedestrian street. Curved wooden slats on a corten steel frame. The seat is a shallow curve with its lowest point in the middle, and the name is laser-cut into the steel leg.
    Denmark. Sammenbænk, the together-bench. The seat slopes toward its middle, so sitters slide gently toward each other. The shape decides how close you sit.
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  • Single-seat wooden bench on a centre pedestal on a Swedish sidewalk, with a high slatted back and a small round metal side table attached at the sitter's right.
    A rest point on the pavement, one seat at a time. Good that it exists. The side table sits on the right, and assumes a right-handed sitter.
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  • Beam seating in a Swedish hospital waiting area. On one shared steel beam, a double-width seat in dusty pink and two single seats in green with armrests, joined by a small table plate. A coffee corner and vending machine behind.
    A hospital waiting area. Seats in two widths share one beam, with no sign saying which is for whom. But the wide seat is placed as a single, so using it means sitting alone.
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  • Gate seating at Haneda airport. In a row of identical black bench seats, four seats wear white slip-on covers printed Priority Seat in four languages, with five seated pictograms, a person with a cane, one with a crutch, a pregnant woman, one holding an infant, and one with a heart-and-cross mark. Charging pillars stand between the seats.
    Tokyo. Priority as a slip-on cover: five kinds of person printed on fabric. The seats underneath are all the same.
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  • Two wooden-slatted benches on a Swedish rail platform, each with a curved ergonomic profile and a continuous black steel tube that weaves along the bench and rises above seat level partway along, dividing the seat.
    A platform bench with a steel tube woven along it. It reads as decoration and works as a divider: nobody lies down here.
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What it is

A seat in public space is a small statement about who is expected to stay. I photograph benches, tables, and chairs because they make that statement in shape rather than words: a table with one open place expects someone on wheels. A bench that circles the table without a gap does not.

The span in these photographs runs from seating that holds a place open, through seating that sorts its sitters, to seating built so that nobody can stay long. None of it carries a sign about who it is for. The shape does all the talking.

I use these photographs in teaching alongside the red carpets. A carpet laid over stairs shows that a gesture of welcome can shut people out. These benches and tables show that furniture can do the same: the shape decides who gets a seat and who stays outside the circle, without a single word or symbol.

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License: Open Educational Resource

This is an Open Educational Resource (OER). Everything I have created here is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).

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