Be Seated [Hardcover]

Laurie Olins interest in public outdoor seating in parks and civic spaces revolves around two poles: the first is a concern for aspects of the ordinary in our settings and actions, the apparatus and effects of the quotidian in our individual lives and experience; the other is the utility of public seating in the conduct and potential of our role as citizens and the establishment of place and community. A not inconsiderable aspect of both is the engendering of pleasure. In a democracy we are expected to fulfill two potentials  those of private citizen and contributing member of a community. When sitting on a bench or chair in a park or plaza we inevitably participate in the life of a particular space, city, and society while simultaneously pursuing our own life with its demands and aspirations. Chairs and benches in their many varieties and situations are the setting (pun intended) for profoundly simple, albeit important, and largely unnoticed aspects of our lives.

Humans are gregarious and habitually love to be together, often sitting about for hours at a time. Commonly this is for dining, whether singly or in groups, large or small. We sit in public places, in private ones, indoors and out, often doing nothing except watching the world. Over the course of centuries many devices have been developed for such purposes. Not a comprehensive history or survey, this is an appreciation derived from frequent, often iterative personal observation and constant professional engagement with the topic of seating, sometimes in gardens, but more particularly in public and civic environments.

The book consists of a series of essays that begin with the authors personal discovery of public seating. An ah hah moment as a young architect visiting Paris and his early experience as a designer is followed by a brief history of the evolution of public space and seating in the West. This is followed by an account of some of his experiments as a landscape architect, and thlC&