Permanent Seating

Outside a public building in Menlo Park, CA, I saw several of these objects bolted to the wall.

Permanant-Seating-1

There were about eight of these in a row and at one end, a portable toilet.

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The flat panels rotate to make a seat for those folks waiting in line to use the toilet!

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An interesting combination of permanent seating with a temporary toilet.

Why do you suppose the seat platforms rotate from vertical to horizontal? A few ideas are (a) to speed drying after the seats get rained on (b) to avoid people leaving trash on the seats (c) any other ideas?

4 Comments

  1. (d) To prevent people from using a series of ‘benches’ as a bed.

    (e) To prevent skateboaders from ‘riding the rails’

  2. Great points Liam.

    Skaters “grinding” the bench would be a problem if they used this kind of bench I wrote about a few months ago.

  3. to prevent birds from dropping on them

  4. Great addition Mark. Thanks!

    I’ve gotten to thinking about what could be the CONS of such a design. I’ve come up with:

    (1) More complex to manufacture

    (2) More effort to maintain

    Both of which make it more costly and a simple flat single piece seat.

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