new york new york

Famous for its dense population I've been told by  recent visitors to Manhattan they are finding ways to introduce the rural into the urban space and provide more social spaces for seating that aren't just more cafes. The highline, regeneration of a disused elevated rail line provides a green space to step up above the residential and commercialised spaces. Herald Square, has introduced green areas for sitting part of liveable streets initiative freedom to sit.

scale

I saw this outside a door in an appartment block in Paris. There is something about the scale, the colours and the story it might tell. Why is it there? Is it really for a very quiet small child...?

an empty cinema

Went to see a one off showing of Fish Tank at the local Odeon. Such an alternative film that they didn't bother to put any adverts on before the film. I was the only one in there. Beautiful

negotiating crowds

Sometimes making your way through crowds of people can be hugely frustrating. Envisage yourself floating above the crowd. Perhaps a step to let you perch on a shelf overlooking the street would be a moment for time out before you lower yourself in to the current again.

snug

this project by Luis Carjaval and Annie Davy  about victorian snugs is a reminder of a great idea that could be revived. Time out from the crowds, where you can make conversation. Apparently it had other uses..

there is life and then there are shoes

Function: something to protect our feet from the ground. Protection from the elements, wet cold, dirt. To prevent cuts and grazes, to keep feet clean.To make it easier to walk?

How fantastic is it that the fashion for higher and higher and higher heels has endured? These astounding elegant sculptural prostheses that slow you down, make you strut, and are all about glamour, sex, and objectification of legs?  Its such a blatant defiance of feminist arguments about hobbling women: sculptural Barbie-fication of girls..difficult not to be impressed.

last november Devon council had to intervene: Late night revellers in a Devon resort  offered flip-flops to help them get home 

It occured to me that perhaps the girls in high heels needed the occasional perch. I have named my first prototype: Slip on

use a bench

These benches in Paris are multi-purpose : day beds, card tables, bag hangers...

the longest bench that ade mentions in comment below is thomas heatherwick extruded aluminium. He is showing the offcuts as sculpture at the haunch of venison

sunday afternoon

Luxembourg gardens, Paris, Sunday afternoon. All you need is a couple of chairs. Make your own arrangements. At one time these chairs were for rent like deckchairs, Proust mentions them in Swann's Way:In search of lost time (1913):" the chair-warden and I are old friends"

sitting post

New Road Brighton: was this intended as a seat? Definitely there is potential to consider heights of seats, a good form of storage for people who can climb? Theres a lot said about public seating and a good debate on Dan Lockton's blog Design with Intent about using design to influence behaviour and the lengths public authorities will go to deter the homeless from rough sleeping and teenagers from hanging around. Similar to the dissappearance of public toilets:why make life inconvenient for everyone? People will find ways around it. 

information overload

What intrigued me at first about Nacho Carbonnell Evolution series was the contrast to the rest of the Milan design shows. Amongst the onslaught of opulence and glamour of sumptuous materials and extravagant signature pieces, his work looks awkward, hand made, childlike. when you discover that its intention is to provide a refuge from information overload, and that it is literally made out of pulped printed material. - it makes all the more sense. There is something appealing about how the drab material, the crooked lines and apparently unstable structure compare to the ubiquitous sleek, stripped down, wipe clean urban shopping environments.