Layers

Description

Defensive design and hostile architecture are common practices in cities around the world. In order to prevent certain groups of people from spending time in public spaces, the general public has to endure misanthropic design.

Can a bench help make public spaces more humane and promote community?

Layers is a bench system that incorporates human-centred urban planning concepts such as ‘Eyes on the Street’, where inclusive spaces, rather than empty, unsafe non-places, create socially sustainable and safe urban areas. It creates a place where users can spend their time as they wish. The modular system, consisting of concrete blocks cast from industrial surplus and seating surfaces made of locally sourced softwood, allows sitting, leaning and lying.

Layers is sustainable for the environment, our society and the workers who assemble it.