Love Park will have 63 moveable chairs, which are deliberately left untethered to allow visitors to make the space their own
When is a chair not just a chair? When it’s a symbol of personal will, deliberately left untethered in a park to allow visitors to make the space their own.
“If every day, at the end of the day when they go to put the chairs away, they’re in different places than they were the day before, or where they put them in the morning, then that’s success,” said Pina Mallozzi, a vice-president at Waterfront Toronto, which oversees revitalization along the lake and commissioned the $15-million park.
“The possibility of choice is as important as the exercise of it,” Mr. Whyte wrote in his seminal book,The idea of moveable chairs was embraced as a civilizing influence by the revitalizers of Bryant Park, which at the time was too dangerous for many New Yorkers to feel comfortable visiting. And although this was only part of changes that also included more entrances, better maintenance and more things to do in the park, it was the symbol that stuck in the public’s mind.
When Mr. Manshel wrote a book about his work at Bryant Park and other public spaces, it was one of those chairs that graced the cover. However, there has been a slight shift. When Love Park designers CCxA created Sugar Beach, also for Waterfront Toronto, they tethered only some of the furniture. It seemed to work, said the firm’s co-president, Marc Hallé, though he acknowledged that a handful of chairs did end up in the lake. And not attaching them with a cable had the extra benefit of removing a tripping hazard.
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