One visitor at this year’s Three Rivers Arts Festival took Riverlife’s invitation to “Take a Seat” — literally. Of 30 molded plastic chairs that Riverlife placed in and around Point State Park for people to move, sit in, then post photos to Twitter, one ended up in Columbus, Ohio.
Each chair had a GPS tracker, but the point wasn’t to bust a thief.
Riverlife’s mission is to initiate, guide and lead activities along our rivers — from developments to trails to art projects — so it tapped into the festival crowds to learn how people use portable street furniture with an eye on future decisions about optimal placement of permanent seating along the rivers. The other eye was on fun, the value of which is as important.
“The arts environment gave people permission to do things they normally wouldn’t,” said Riverlife’s senior project manager, Nina Chase, who conceived the idea. “And by injecting whimsy, we can see how creative and optimistic people are. The point is to change people’s perception of the value of public space” and their role in it.
Adam Nelson founded City of Play with that idea in mind. His organization gathers adults, young and old, to do fun things in city spaces, to flex their imaginations. Its online motto is “More curious, less afraid.”
By the time most of us have stopped playing and testing our boundaries, we are moving in patterns. We have more ought nots than why nots.
Even a safe dare — go ahead, take this seat, move it somewhere — can feel liberating because we normally leash and lock street furniture so people who aren’t tethered to ought nots won’t steal them.
Nobody else would steal them.
We who obey the rules and fly right need a little prodding once in awhile to swerve and reclaim that branch of human endeavor we ceded to adulthood. There’s a lot of room between the “you can’t do that” in your head and the “you can’t do that” which is immoral or illegal.
Ms. Chase said 250 people posted comments and photos on social media of their interaction with the portable chairs. The whole project — chairs, technology and delivery — cost $2,200.
People placed chairs along the Allegheny River, at the fountain at the Point. One was tracked to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. Janna Hockenjos, owner of the yoga studio Inhale Pittsburgh, situated a chair for herself and one beside it for her golden retriever, Mae Belle.
One chair ended up in the water steps on the North Shore and five were spotted in the river. Allegheny CleanWays and a passenger on a Boat Pittsburgh pontoon helped retrieve all the chairs from the water.
Brandon Casturo moved a chair under the Fort Duquesne bridge and posted a photo with this message: “This chair told me to move it and tweet so I did.” He followed the instruction and took it a step further, posting a photo of the chair on the North Shore water steps. He wrote, “It’s wading for someone else.”
One woman placed a chair on each step of the Point State Park amphitheater and had someone record a video of her sitting in one after the other.
“People got creative,” Ms. Chase said. “One guy carried a chair running on the trail, adding 10 pounds to his workout.”
Ms. Chase is a landscape architect and urban designer. While working with a firm in Boston, she and a colleague created a pop-up park called The Lawn on D, as in D Street. It was intended to be temporary, she said, “a testing ground for ideas.”
Now the Lawn on D is a permanent Boston hot spot, with an adult swing set that lights up, games, lawn furniture, inflatable bunnies, bouncy castles, fire pits, food trucks, movie screenings and cornhole tournaments.
“What was illuminating to me was the investment that people bringing people brought to the space,” Ms. Chase said.
Investment breeds investment, but that’s a serious topic and I want to stay in the world of fun a little longer. Because you don’t have to be 8 to suddenly want to find a message in the crotch of a tree in the park that reads, “In 40 paces, turn left and look for a map for the next clue.”
Anyone up for a game of treasure hunt?
To see photos of people and the chairs they moved, visit #TakeaSeatPGH. If urban space design interests you, the Project for Public Spaces at www.pps.org is a good source. Diana Nelson Jones: djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626.
First Published: July 3, 2017, 4:00 a.m.
