|
 |
| |
RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
| |
| | | |
 |
| |
| |
|
| | RADARSHELTER The House in a Park is a prototype piece of urban furniture that opens up to accommodate the homeless. Peter Johns looks at Sean Godsell’s proposal to build rudimentary shelter into civic infrastructure.
|
A lot of urban space and street furniture
tries to keep people moving. No skating, no
loitering, and especially no sleeping.
Various types of grooved and flip-up seats
have been invented to frustrate those
wanting to stretch out.
Meanwhile, between three and six
hundred people sleep rough in Melbourne
every night (CHP report, 1997). The law
views them as illegal campers, and
governmental efforts to help them have
focused on reducing numbers on the
street rather than dealing with the
practicalities of living on it.
Melbourne architect Sean Godsell has
attempted to redress the balance by
building a park bench that encourages
people to sleep on it. At night it transforms
into a shelter. By day it’s an inconspicuous
steel bench, if slightly oversized. The only
real clue to its after-hours possibilities is a
large graphic on top that contains a house
symbol with familiar gabled roof and
chimney. This is about as homely as the
shelter gets.
When it’s up and running, council
workers will go around at dusk “turning up” the beds. One side of the bench is lifted up
and locked in place. Underneath is a woven
wire bed frame. This bench is not supposed
to be a designer object, despite the cheeky
branding. It is robust and cheap ($3,000),
designed for easy cleaning and injury-free
operation. It has an automatic night light
shining onto the ground beneath, signalling
that someone is occupying the bench.
Godsell thinks this park bench makes
for a safer and more comfortable nestling
space than a shop doorway. Getting in and
out of the bed is a rather awkward process
though, and wouldn’t be easy to do if you
were elderly or overweight. The next
prototype will be higher and wider to
accommodate bigger people and those
wearing many layers of clothing. For Godsell
it is too early to know if it is going to work.
That’s what the trial run is for.
This trial and other tricky issues are
currently being worked through with two
interested councils, welfare services and
corporate sponsors. Issues such as where
the benches could be sited, maintenance
(the bench has to be upgraded to stainless
steel), and liability are being examined. Then
there’s the problem of moving people on in
the morning so that the bed can revert to a
bench. Godsell is nevertheless hopeful that a
trial will happen in the near future.
Whether it works or not, this project will
push the envelope. While artists Lucy Orta
and Kryzsztof Wodiczko have tackled the
issue imaginatively in the galleries, little has
been done at ground zero. The homeless
are, by definition, excluded from general
architectural discussion. They are hard to
find, hard to place and hard to bill.
Godsell insists that this project isn’t a
bandaid solution, for him it’s better to do
something than nothing. The park bench
joins his other pet project, Future Shack, in
a new socially-minded sideline that his
practice feels drawn to. This work has to be
simple, affordable, and make use of existing
materials and infrastructure. It is a
necessary counterpoint for him to the
award-winning bespoke homes that he is
gaining a reputation for.
Peter Johns is an Melbourne-based architect who also maintains www.butterpaper.com
|
|
|
|
|
|
Copyright © 2010 Architecture Media Pty Ltd
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
