“The ergonomic dimension of public and political life is nowhere as evident as in contemporary urban environments. Although often in subtle and largely imperceptible ways, the urban fabric is constantly affecting our material and physical well-being as well as the ways in which we relate to each other.Take any random street near you, and you will find a myriad of mundane devices that, day in and out, are silently, but effectively, informing, constraining or allowing the ways in which you move, inhabit and relate in the city and its citizens. One just needs to think about the different types of public benches and the different kinds of being un/comfortably together (or alone) that they afford…It is in this sense that talking about ‘urban comfort’ offers a way to talking about the quality of our public and political life. However, this has hardly been the case. Comfort has usually been considered a purely technical question, not a political one. The ultimate goal of ergonomics has been to comfort users, not citizens. Comfort, in other words, has been about coupling bodies with things to increase fit while preserving functionality, aesthetics and efficiency, rather than about how to couple bodies with environments to increase the quality of public and political life. The Guggengeim lab is, in this sense, a much-welcomed attempt to open up the discussion of ergonomics in urban life and about the need to see comfort, and the processes involved in generating or constraining it, as genuine political questions.”

From “Benches, stairs, sidewalks and the politics of urban comfort”

Via Material World

Notes

  1. andrewfm said: THE COMFORTABLE IS THE POLITICAL
  2. modernandmaterialthings posted this