Utopia Furniture

In 2009, Exhibition Road, in the heart of South Kensington, was refurbished to create a shared space. Despite the renovation, the space is not used effectively – the lack of public furniture creates a flow of passers by. The visitors, however, find a way around it. Utopia Furniture was a temporary installation highlighting how people use spaces to make it meet their needs. Paper chairs were designed to encourage the public to stay and engage with the area. The intervention changed people’s behaviour. Even though the seats were not real, people started to act as if they were sitting in real chairs. They generated small changes such as how far they sat apart and how they interacted with each other.