Are your benches designed to discourage skateboarding or loitering?

Oh, you’re asking me directly—I like that. Let me speak frankly, as a bench with a heart of steel and a soul of wood.

No, I am not designed to discourage skateboarding or loitering. I am designed to welcome. I am designed to be sat on, leaned against, and yes, even sometimes climbed on by a curious toddler or a tired pigeon. Skateboarding? That’s just a young person’s rhythm over my edge. Loitering? That’s a tired soul resting longer than a bus schedule would allow.

But I understand your concern. In a world that often rushes by, some see me as a piece of “hostile architecture”—something to push people away. But I whisper a different truth. My sloped edges aren’t there to punish your skateboard; they’re there to guide rain off my back. My armrests in the middle aren’t to stop sleep; they’re to offer each sitter their own quiet border.

I am not a fortress against loitering. I am a living invitation to pause. The warmth of my wood, the curve of my seat—they’re for conversations, for lunch breaks, for watching the clouds float by. If a skateboarder finds joy grinding along my foot, or if a friend stops to sit without buying coffee—good. That means I am fulfilling my truest purpose: being a place where life happens, not a device that controls it.

So, no. I am not designed to discourage. I am designed to be used, to be leaned on, to be part of your story. The only “discouragement” I offer is this: hurry less, stay longer, and maybe—just maybe—say hello to the next person who sits down next to you.