Proposal for chapter ‘The Public Setting’ in
O’Mahony, C. (ed.) A Cultural History in the Modern Period (Bloomsbury, 2017)

This is the proposal accepted by the series editor for development into a 6000-8000 word chapter. The chapter is now completed and the volume will be published by Bloomsbury later in 2017.

When has the proximity of two, otherwise unexceptional, park benches been more charged with meaning than when Misha Erwitt captured this collision of transgressive and conservative cultures in a New York park? The small void between the benches, a well-intentioned tactic by the city authorities to encourage social interaction in a public place perhaps, becomes the metaphorical, as well as physical gulf that separates the confident transvestites, from their disapproving neighbours. Furniture in public settings physically and symbolically marks the ambiguous and often uncomfortable ways by which we negotiate public spaces.

It is commonly said that tall buildings have come to define the modern city, but arguably, the way we have furnished our urban landscapes, our streetscapes, parks, playgrounds, shopping malls and transport hubs, tell us as much about the changing experiences of urban and suburban living – the impacts of political and economic change, patterns of work, consumption and leisure, new technologies and materials – than our buildings do. In rural and seaside settings too, a furnishing of the landscape – seating, picnic tables, litter bins and signage, at motorway service stations, national parks, theme parks, beaches – signal our consumption of heritage, sports and other leisure pursuits, and the transport means by which we reach those sites. Streets, squares, landscapes and public buildings are furnished ostensibly for a ‘common good’, but that very notion is inappropriate within modern cities of multiple identities and needs.

In this chapter, I will position the concept of ‘public setting’ within the extensive academic debate about how public space can be defined and understood through the 20th century and into the 21st, but I will define public space as any place intended for use by the public, with or without a fee. This might include spaces that are privately owned; shopping malls, railway stations, heritages sites; places jointly owned by public and private bodies such as some parks, street cafes, squares; and wholly publicly-owned spaces, for example streets, schools and libraries. A definition of ‘furniture’ will also be treated broadly because ‘street furniture’ means all artifacts that furnish a street, from bollards to lamp posts. The scope is therefore wide and not all typologies or places can be discussed, but this approach will enable an argument that positions furniture design, production and consumption alongside changing narratives of public space and public art. I will discuss how furnishing in public settings is shaped not only by local government, private interests, legislation and planning policies, by architects, artists and designers, but also by the people who use the furniture. In the 21st century, concepts of co-design and a greater understanding of the emotional, experiential, sustainable and performative possibilities for designed artefacts, has raised the stakes for designers of furniture for the public setting, to test, challenge and innovate.

Chapter subheadings may include the following:

• Planning, furnishing, space and place: – changing planning and architecture ideologies
• Subversion, furniture and public space
• Performativity, play, space and place