Kudos to a young art student at Cooper Union for addressing one of NYC’s public space problems – a serious lack of public seating. Caroline Woolard has taken matters into her own quirky & imaginative hands by designing a simple platform seat that attaches to No Parking signs, in an attempt to reclaim public space and “offer rest and contemplation in transitional spaces”.

To date she has installed about 10 of them around her Brooklyn neighborhood. We can only hope that she will also turn her sights onto the sidewalks of Manhattan, where I am often searching in vain for a step or a security bollard just to have a moment out of the hustle bustle. She speaks eloquently about her reasoning behind the project on her blog:

“In the city, the street should be a destination in itself. Many people use the street to get from one place to another, but it is an invaluable arena for immediate interaction. Instead of walking to a park or other zone calculated for relaxation, Have a Seat serves those people who want to pause amidst action for a direct perspective on the momentum of the city. The seat is a signal at the scale of the human body in a city of buildings that consume space and light at the expense of pedestrians who are swept forward by wind tunnels in the shadow of skyscrapers. Unlike monuments that overpower people in scale and pretension, these wooden chairs wait to be used by a single body on the street.”

To read more about the project and view a map of where all the seats are installed, visit her blog.

Her project was also just featured in the Nov. 15th issue of Time Out New York. To read the full article, click here.