Washington Square Park Proposal
For my proposal, I chose to focus on the poor distribution of social activity. Most visitors to the park congregated in open areas, eschewing the park benches. Interestingly, this is in stark contrast to Union Square Park, which caters to a large population of single day-workers, who tend to distribute themselves among the benches that line the park walkways.
In keeping with social history of Washington Square Park, I present a solution of slightly curving the park benches to form a scallop shape, encouraging group social behavior with an emphasis on eyecontact, as seated visitors will not have to turn to talk to each other. This system reinforces interaction amongst park-goers, and facilitates the type of engaged conversation one might expect from a public square.
Washington Square Park is fundamentally a social space. It is a public arena, unrevered for its landscape or ascent of nature, yet lauded for its ability to facilitate the mixing of many diverse people. My proposal focuses on the use of social architecture in the specific physical space of Washington Square Park. I aim to create a park-wide seating system that contributes to a lively social setting—one in which people feel more comfortable engaging with strangers or interacting in novel ways.
There are already several seating systems within the park that encourage social behavior. The most prominent examples are used by musicians who come to the park to perform. The path along the southeast quadrant curves enough to create a performance space, and small jazz bands (often including a drum kit) can be seen playing there. Due to the curvature of the path, the park benches in that area also form an informal seating arrangement that is conducive to watching a performance. Likewise, the central area, which contains the fountain, is populated by concrete bench structures that encourage impromptu performance due to their curved, inclusive arrangement.
I believe it is possible to further increase the volume of novel interaction and friendly meetings by extending the positive characteristics of the aforementioned seating arrangements to the seating found throughout the rest of the park. Most of the current seating is composed of standard park benches that line the walkways of the main thoroughfares of the park. Additionally there are a few smaller benches that accompany the chess tables, as well as a few scattered picnic tables, notably in the northeast quadrant. The walkway benches are heavily used, yet distributes patrons in a linear fashion and restricts group interaction. During my observations of the park, I noted that most groups of people gravitated toward the central area of the park, choosing to sit in more varying arrangements that utilized the space in novel ways. For example, groups would often use the steps of the fountain, as well as the concrete benches, to situate themselves in comfortable spatial arrangements. This affected the dynamics of the group as it allowed actors a wider range of movement and direction of speech, and thus increased the diversity of available interactions and communications. Conversely, if a group consisting of more than two people arranged themselves on the walkway benches, there were invariably problems of communication between members not sitting directly next to one another, which acts as a constraint to conversation possibilities.
The seating design I’m proposing seeks to eliminate these restrictions. The structure is that of continuous scallop design that flanks the edges of the walkways, as the current benches do. There are three unique iterations of the scallop, with variation in the angle of the curve and breadth of the shape—Generally the wider the shape, the more people can be accommodated, ranging from 4 to 8 standard persons. The design places people in a position that facilitates forward-facing conversation and, given the playful aesthetic, a sense of informality. The exterior connector space of the scallop design can also be used to corral covered trash cans, recycling bins, or light poles, thus clearing the walkways. This implementation will be contingent on aesthetic factors, such as smell or light pollution, though. In a secondary phase, small tables or ottoman structures can be placed inside the scallop to create the feel of an outdoor café. Accordingly, game bins may also be implemented, to provide patrons with board games; these can be stored within the ottoman-style table areas of the scallop design. The examples I've provided include these tables.
This is an isometric view of the bench I am proposing.
This is an overhead view of the bench I propose
The standard size of a park bench is 60 inches long, 24 inches wide, and 32 inches high. These modified benches will be built to similar specifications, though longer to accomodate the curve. Additionally, the curvature will protrude the benches farther out into the walkways, so at this time it's unclear as to whether the benches could line both sides of the current walkways in the park. The material for the benches will be sourced from Build it Green! BIG is a non-profit salvage yard that sells building materials otherwise destined for landfills, sourcing these materials from recently demolished buildings in NYC. The yard is located in Astoria, Queens and open to both commercial enterprises and individuals. They sell many types of standard lumber, and though that is not a typical sustainable material, I feel that the recycling of New York City buildings into New York City park benches is a positive thing for both the environment and community.
