The Bench: Studying Atmospheres and Affordances of social exclusion in public space

This paper takes point of departure in ongoing research into ‘dark design’ (Jensen 2019). Through design interventions such as leaning benches, steel spikes, water sprinklers, and barbed wire socially vulnerable and homeless people are kept from occupying and staying at public spaces in the cities around the world. ‘Such exclusion by design’ contributes to ‘atmospheres of rejection’ (Jensen 2020), and affords new patterns of human mobility in the city. As the leaning (or otherwise modified bench) is one of the most predominant dark design interventions, this paper will single out the bench as one exemplary artefact to be explored. The bench carries both symbolic meaning, as well as it is a material artefact affording rest and occupancy. The design of benches and the positioning of them (or the removal of them) are micro-installations that together with other urban furniture, makes-up the urban spaces as sites of congregation, exchange and experience. The paper explore the bench on a background of two key terms: affordance and atmosphere. The former is related to the ways in which the bench performs in a relational assemblage with various human bodies. The latter is related to the ways in which the bench is ‘read’ as an artefact communicating intentionality (from civic enjoyment of the urban spectacle to the pushing off, of vulnerable social groups looking for rest in the city). The paper speculate how a research design would look like given an interest in understanding the bench’s performativity as dark design? Furthermore, the paper looks into cases of art in public spaces where the socio-cultural significance of the bench has been either problematized or made visible by art interventions (e.g. the ‘socially modified’ benches by the artist Jeppe Hein and the ‘pay and sit’ coin-operated bench by Fabian Brunsing). The paper ends with a discussion of ‘material interpellation’ as a possible way to understand the workings of artefacts of dark design.