Designing Better Outdoor Seating: 4 Key Considerations for Inclusive Spaces

On a beautiful day, head to the local park, and you find yourself surrounded by people that you may have only seen in passing. They’re your neighbours and community, the locals who have lived in the area, taking a few moments of their time to enjoy the great outdoors in the best way possible: by sitting, taking a few deep breaths, and looking at the world around them.

Our ability to sit outside, surrounded by the best of our environment, is fantastic. We have unparalleled opportunities to choose where we go at the end of the day – a seaside bench, a park green, a retail park’s hidden oasis – with no questions asked except whether there is somewhere to sit and take a moment. It’s here where conversations happen and communities grow.

But not all seating opportunities in the great outdoors can follow the same schema. To build community-led spaces that emphasise community, there are four considerations to build the better spaces that will lead to better places.

1. Accessibility

It’s a privilege to be capable of walking for long distances, sitting without the need of a back-rest, and being able to get up without using an arm rest for leverage. It’s a greater privilege to know that there will always be somewhere for you to sit, no matter how out of bounds a place might be.

Armrests and back-rests, built into seating, offer more than a resting point: they are opportunities, for the elderly, the chronically ill, the differently abled, giving them a way of levering themselves into a comfortable position.

It takes little to add a backrest or an armrest to a bench. It means everything to people who need to use it.

And communities, regardless of the size and place, will always have someone who would benefit from a little extra help to reach the same seat at the table.

2. Location

You can usually choose the location of an outdoor bench. Over time, each place will build its own community: a nest of locals who love their cities very deeply, and who may value and prioritise aspects of it that might not be noticeable to someone outside.

Our Canterbury High Street project had six beautiful, strong trees, scattered down the road. Locals loved them for the shade and the birds that visited, for their indelible history, for the fact that they embodied a sign of home. However, the street also needed seating, places that would allow people to stop when they needed to, no matter the point they were at in their shopping journey.

Building the seating in curvatures around the bases of the trees prioritised the community that was already there without locking out the community that could be there. This gives a greater portion of people in Canterbury the opportunity to go out, interact, and enjoy the world.

3. Materials

Metal, prized for its sleek lustre, is a beautiful thing to work with. Wood, and all its natural, golden tones, can elevate any place just that little bit higher. In enclosed retail spaces, where seating will see limited sun, there’s no cause for concern over their durability, but in outdoor spaces, where they will see the sun, the rain, the sleet, the snow and gale force winds, it’s important to consider durability alongside beauty – and the price of what both would cost in emissions.

Fortunately, we are in a period of time where the two elements can coexist quite nicely, and a far lower emission cost than previously. Wood sourced from around the UK, in old houses and abandoned buildings and piers, is not only weather-fast, having been chosen for its durability decades before we had international shipping, but can be repurposed into a new life as seating with nothing more than a coat of varnish. Similarly, a low-emission coating can lengthen the lifespan of metal, protecting it against rust for far longer than it would if unprotected.

And as the costs lower, the capacity to create and build new seating opportunities increases.

4. Flexibility

Along the high street or just inside the park, a bench placed well, and made to suit the wide spectrum of capability, can draw people in to sit and linger, creating the opportunity for community to happen. Offering different seating options ensures that nobody is left out of the conversation – whether they want to lean back against a back-rest, or need additional help to get themselves into an outdoor seat.

Outdoor spaces for community places

There are diminishing opportunities to enjoy public spaces, but the ones that we do have fulfil a very important role in our progression as a society: they become the places where we meet our neighbours, friends, and community members. They form a valued aspect of our lives, one that can’t be solely met by coffee shops and retail parks. The restorative effects of nature are multitudinous – and it stands to reason that when we combine the beauty of the outdoors with good seating, people will go where the people are.

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