Public Offering
Knock-down park bench, plywood. 2024
One of the most simple gestures of generosity you can offer someone is a place to rest their feet. Public benches keep us company during some of our more tender moments. They are where we go to idle away time in the company of strangers or sit with the sore parts of ourselves, and sometimes both. A bench is one of the few reliable comforts of a city landscape, a place to watch the happenings, to be alone together, a sense of belonging with no fee to be paid. It is a public offering, and it says: you do not have to speak, you do not have to listen if you don’t want to, but you can tune in to yourself, this place, and the people that pass you by if you wish. And I believe that is a very generous offer. I hope wherever you look, you find something beautiful.
“We spend our life, it’s ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench.”
– Texts for Nothing, by Samuel Beckett
The bench displays a plaque that reads “if grief is love with no place to go, then I hope you know you can sit here and bring it with you.” Engraved in anodized aluminum.
Public Offering Favorites Reading List:
Co-Sensing with Radical Tenderness by Dani d’Emilia, Vanessa Andreotti & GTDF Collective
Public benches: The Seat of Civilisation, article by Edwin Heathcote
Allborgarrätten – The Right to the City as a Swedish Tradition by Jan Rydén
“Benches become like porches”: Built and social environment influences on older adults’ experiences of mobility and well-being, article published in Social Science & Medicine
Sitting outside: Conviviality, self-care and the design of benches in urban public space, article by Clare Rishbeth and Ben Rogaly