bench anchor

The Camden bench is a type of concrete street furniture. It was commissioned by the Camden London Borough Council and installed in Camden, London in 2012. It is designed specifically to influence the behaviour of the public by restricting undesirable behaviour and instead be usable only as a bench, a principle known as hostile architecture. Because the design is "defined far more by what it is not than what it is", the bench has been called the "perfect anti-object" and a "masterpiece of unpleasant design". The designers contend that: "Homelessness should never be tolerated in any society and if we start designing in to accommodate homeless then we have totally failed as a society. Close proximity to homelessness unfortunately makes us uncomfortable so perhaps it is good that we feel that and recognise homelessness as a problem rather than design to accommodate it." "Feature sites" for introduction of the bench were on Great Queen Street and High Holborn.Produced by UK company Factory Furniture, the bench is designed to deter use for sleeping, littering, skateboarding, drug dealing, graffiti and theft. It attempts to achieve this primarily through angular surfaces (deterring sleepers and skateboarders), an absence of crevices or hiding places, and non-permeable materials (via a waterproof anti-paint coating). It is not secured to the ground and can be moved by a crane attaching to built-in anchor points. Due to its weight, it is also designed to function as a roadblock.A Camden bench has been used as part of an installation artwork by Roger Hiorns.

View More On Wikipedia.org