Public Space as Social Infrastructure
2022
A bench, a shaded edge, a room left open at dusk. These are infrastructure. They decide how a place feels to be in.
For years liveability was measured by how well a place supported doing: living, learning, working and playing. The next question is what the same place does to being, to how people feel while they are in it.
Being and doing are usually treated separately, until a good place puts them back together. People arrive to rest and stay to talk. They arrive to talk and leave calmer. The Big Sit has run in public space in Singapore since November 2020, and on to the Meditatio Centre in London. Its instruction is still the clearest line in our work. Don't just do something, sit there.
Old practice and new evidence belong in the same brief. Meditation is thousands of years old. Stress levels, attention and heat comfort can be measured today.
The cheapest social infrastructure a district can build is a reason to sit down in company, and it pays back in every hour the place stays open.
