Benchmark

The bench presented here is a nomadic bench which facilitated a series of impromptu interviews about Dublin’s public spaces. Designed to be easily transported, the bench was built using fragments of Carrara marble and salvaged metal scraps. 

The discourse around Dublin’s public spaces and infrastructures is a frequently negative one. As a symbolic object, the public bench represents many of Dubliners’ most deeply felt qualms with their city; homelessness, price inflations, diminishing cultural amenities, lack of non-commercial urban space. It embodies the idea of public infrastructure in general, as an object which invites anyone to stop and stay in a specific place, without cost or criteria. 

Public infrastructures are conduits for how we can interact with the city, as individuals and communities, and their presence implies a trust in the city’s inhabitants, simply to be and use their city as they see fit. As a designed, material object, a bench may proclaim the value we place on our shared urban fabric, on our city’s character. 

Before arriving at the IAF House, the bench travelled for one day around Dublin, hosting a series of discussions with local occupiers of public space and random passersby, who shared their time and views with us. What’s clear from these discussions is that bench or not, people will find place in the city to do what they want to. Yet a bench signifies a generosity, a shared amenity which somehow one expects as a right of the urban dweller, even for those who are less compelled or less able to carve out their place in the public realm through more unconventional means. 

We are left to wonder - if so much happens in the absence of characterful, situated, or even basic infrastructure, what is possible if the public are supported in their inhabitation of our shared spaces?

The Irish Architecture Foundation commissioned rubble to make Benchmark on the occasion of Open House Dublin 2024. The commission is part of rubble's participation in gaplab, a programme of strategic mentoring and development for graduate architects to support and sustain risk and their critical practice in architecture.