For this post I want to expose a project comes from Madrid-El Matadero and more specifically from “Todos por la Praxis” collective. It’s about interaction. It’s about how to change public space to allow meeting place creation and break the dynamics of consumption spaces. And how to achieve this ambitious project is the furniture !

“Street furniture tends to disappear from outdoor space. Static objects and pieces of equipment installed on streets and roads disturb and break the dynamics of consumption spaces.
Benches hinder circulation flow of traffic within consumption paths, they may become a place for homeless people to stay over and they provide space for meetings and concentration of people in specific places. A tendency to avoid the installation of this kind of street furniture increases. As a result, city zones where you can sit on a public bench have been reduced.
This project reflects on the importance of street furniture as a driving force for a social dynamics beyond the purely consumerist. Therefore a working progress methodology is used to create a space of reflection and experimentation.
The starting point will be the work carried out in workshops that will be installed in different sites in Madrid. In this context we can establish open conditions for experimentation, both conceptually and in the construction of street furniture.
One of self-imposed condition is that the implementation of each proposal is low cost and easy to assembly. We propose the implementation of 4 benches, as a starting point, which are built with recycled materials of other items of street furniture such as traffic signs or garbage cans. A scaffolding material and other building materials such as containers of water will be reused. Through these simple interventions a transformation of these elements into objects of street furniture is proposed”.