Mixed Results, but Great Fun!

 

Like Paul, I had mixed results. 

I brought one chair pad to Spy Pond Park on a Saturday morning, knowing I’d be sure to find parents and children, dog walkers, and the like. At the park, it was largely ignored for the half hour or so that I was there, except for one mom that looked at it and commented something like "Oh, look at that.  Someone made a bench pad out of plastic bags."  I also had a cat trot up to the lake to watch the ducks, and he jumped up on the stone platform and sniffed it before settling in by the water. 

I would have loved to see a child grab it and use it to sail down a slide, the way you’d use a piece of wax paper, but that didn’t look very likely to happen.

I brought my second chair pad to small plaza near Arlington Center, where several bus routes pass by.  Generally, people walked right by without looking, save for one man who read the tag and kicked it with his toe a little (I snapped a picture).  I then decided to physically intervene, and approached three people: and elderly man who spoke Spanish and no English (nice person who did his best to communicate with me, but we could only get so far), and two other kind souls, a man and woman willing to talk and let me snap pictures.  I basically explained who I was, what I was doing, and asked them what they thought and whether they'd use one of these bench pads they found it sitting there.  The man said maybe, adding that he found it interesting because he has a business that sells woven place mats (among other things).  He though it would make a great place mat.  The woman liked the idea, but said she probably would not sit on it if she didn't know how long it's been there, since she would be worried that it may have been rained on.  However she did say it's the kind of thing that she'd use if she had it with her and could take it with her to something like a sporting event.

I left both pads out overnight, and then checked on them late the next morning, on a Sunday.  One in Arlington Center had disappeared.  I checked all the garbage cans in the area, and the ground within a good 100-yard radius, but found nothing.  I hope this means that someone took it and found it useful.  


I found the other pad on the ground under an information kiosk near the bench that I had left it on.  Since the park was deserted at that point, I took this pad and brought it to Arlington center, making sure to wedge the corners between the slats of a bench so the wind wouldn’t take it away.  I’m hoping it won’t be there tomorrow, the day that our weeklong experiment comes to an end. 

To the girl scouts that I talked to at Stop and Shop on Saturday, as I was returning my extra plastic bags for recycling, we hope to hear from you.  If you decide to try this project, we hope you’ll have as much fun with it as we did.  I’m imagining the good you could do, playing with the design and distributing these things at a local sporting event.  Good luck with your cookie sales!

Pads In the Wild

This past Saturday I took our creations into the "Wild", meaning Somerville and Cambridge.   This was the first chance to test out the pads and view user's interactions.   I visited three locations, each to varying degrees of success.   I took a passive approach, placing the pad at the location and watched from a distance, versus the more direct approach Tess took in explaining this experiment to potential users.

The first image shows the heavily used bus stop at Union Square in Somerville.   I placed it next to a woman, and within a few minutes another woman sat next to her on the metal bench.   At first they both sat next to it.   After another minute, one of them picked it up, looked at the tag and did an overall inspection of the pad.   After the initial inspection, you can see in the first photo the woman placed it underneath her.   Success!   When the bus came a few minutes later, the woman grabbed her bag and the pad, and took it with her, hopefully to further enjoy the pad on the bus.

I then placed another pad at Harvard Square where the 66 bus makes its stop.   We had thought that Harvard Square would be very receptive to the idea, but after fifteen minutes of patiently waiting, only two students had arrived at the bus stop and they were busy chatting, paying no attention to the available pad on the bench.   This was Saturday morning and may not have been the ideal hour for implementing the pad.

Onward and upward!

After Harvard Square, I took the bus to Inman Square in Cambridge.   The second photo shows the pad at the Bus Stop for the 91 and 83 busses to Central Square.   I take the 91 frequently and there are always people congregated at this stop.   I watched from across the street as people came and went, barely paying any attention to the pad.   As a few people passed, they craned their neck to peek at the tag, but that seemed to be the extent of use.   As you can see, a person decided to kneel on the bench next to the pad, but that was as close as I came to observing somebody using our pad.

In all, a mixed review on the initial release of the bench pads into the wild.

Want to make your own plastic bag bench pad?

See the "How-To Instructions" and "Make a Bench Pad Tag" pages for tips on putting together your own bench pads.

The links to these pages are located in the top box on the right side of this blog's home page.

Acknowledgement

We thank Stop and Shop in Arlington for their donation of used plastic bags.

We also thank a kind sales associate at Play Time, an arts and crafts store in Arlington, for the idea of laminating our tags with clear post office packing tape.

Welcome to the Guerilla Bench Pad Project!

Our student team at the Boston Architectural College thanks you for visiting us online.

If you've reached this page, we hope you've found the results of our design work as useful as our gorilla finds it.

When we signed up for an architectural studio class, little could we have guessed that we'd be playing with plastic bags the whole first week. And you may be asking, what do bench warmers made of plastic bags have to do with architecture?

In one sentence, it's about the relationship between design, urban space, and the social.

Our Assignment:

During the span on one week, design an intervention that affects others in a positive way, construct it in the public realm, and document both the process and the results.








Questions to Consider:

What does it mean to construct something that's explicitly meant to perform a service for people?
How does craft and choice of materials come into play?
How do presentation or representation techniques convey concepts?
What are the realities of constructing in the public realm?
How do you gauge a project's success?
How can individuals use the design process to engage and educate the public?


We hope you appreciate our efforts, and we'd love to see the idea grow and proliferate. We invite you to leave comments on this blog, improve upon our design, and make more bench pads for public use.