the architecture of permission or how thoughtful public design can activate our inner child

thoughtful public design as permission to play

For more than a century, architecture and design have excelled at telling us how to behave. Benches are for sitting. Squares are for crossing. Museums are for observing. Homes are for efficiency. Public space is governed by an unwritten choreography that rewards productivity over pause. Yet the most exciting designers working today are beginning to write a different script.

Rather than creating objects that simply solve problems, they are producing environments that loosen social conventions. A bench becomes impossible to sit on ‘correctly.’ A pavilion refuses to dictate a single programme. A domestic object slows us down through surprise instead of streamlining our routines. These works don’t ask us to play, they simply make play feel socially acceptable again. Below, we take a look at modern designers that extend invitations with their public work, suggesting that pleasure may actually be one of design’s most essential functions.

jeppe hein’s modified social benches series begins with one of the most ordinary pieces of urban infrastructure | image courtesy of Jeppe Hein

Jeppe Hein’s benches become social choreography

Few designers understand the behavioural power of public furniture better than Jeppe Hein. His ongoing Modified Social Benches series begins with one of the most ordinary pieces of urban infrastructure before bending, looping and twisting it into unexpected forms. Some benches encourage reclining instead of sitting. Others require visitors to balance, face one another or negotiate shared space with strangers. The intervention is remarkably subtle. Nothing instructs visitors to interact. No signage explains how the bench should be used. Instead, the object quietly removes the invisible social rules attached to conventional street furniture. Children instinctively climb them. Adults hesitate—before often doing exactly the same.

Elsewhere, projects such as Appearing Rooms, where choreographed fountains create ever-changing walkable rooms of water, similarly transform public squares into shared stages of spontaneous participation. Strangers laugh together, dart between water walls and momentarily abandon the etiquette that usually governs civic space.

Across Hein’s wider practice, movement is never treated as spectacle, but as a social language. His works rely on the unpredictable choreography of their users to become complete. A child climbing over a bench, a commuter choosing to recline instead of scroll through their phone, strangers laughing together as they navigate walls of water—these unscripted interactions are the real medium. Hein designs situations rather than sculptures, revealing how quickly public space can become more generous once people are given permission to behave differently.

for appearing rooms, choreographed fountains create ever-changing walkable rooms of water | image courtesy of Jeppe Hein

Raumlabor Berlin imagines cities as unfinished conversations

Where Hein works through objects, Raumlabor Berlin operates at the urban scale. Across two decades, the collective has consistently questioned who public space is really for. Projects such as Kitchen Monument inflate a temporary civic living room inside forgotten urban sites, inviting residents to gather around food, discussion and performance. Rather than delivering a finished building, Raumlabor constructs an atmosphere where communities collectively define the programme.

Similarly, The Floating University Berlin, created within a former rainwater retention basin, transformed neglected infrastructure into an experimental campus for learning, ecology and public life. Here, architecture becomes less about permanent form than temporary possibility. Visitors are encouraged not simply to occupy these spaces but to reinvent them. Raumlabor’s architecture is playful not because it is colourful or whimsical, but because it refuses predetermined behaviour.

This openness runs through Raumlabor’s practice, from experimental theatres and temporary pavilions to long-term community collaborations. Their projects rarely distinguish between architect and user; instead, they invite local residents to shape programmes, contribute ideas and ultimately redefine what public architecture can be. Rather than delivering polished monuments, Raumlabor creates platforms for collective authorship. In doing so, play becomes less about recreation than about civic participation—an active rehearsal for more democratic cities.

raumlabor berlin’s kitchen monument inflates a temporary civic living room inside forgotten urban sites | image courtesy of raumlabor berlin

Mischer’Traxler turns curiosity into a design material

If play begins with curiosity, then the work of Mischer’Traxler Studio reminds us that some of the most rewarding interactions are the ones that unfold slowly. Rather than producing objects that reveal themselves at first glance, the studio creates responsive environments and installations that depend on human presence to come alive. Their celebrated installation Curiosity Cloud, a suspended landscape of hand-blown glass bulbs inhabited by robotic insects, only activates when visitors approach. As movement triggers the insects to illuminate individual bulbs, each encounter becomes unique, transforming spectators into participants.

A similar sensitivity defines Idea of a Tree, in which furniture is produced through a solar-powered process that records changing environmental conditions directly into the finished object. Rather than concealing the circumstances of production, the project invites users to read time, weather and place through the object itself, encouraging a deeper awareness of the systems that shape our material world.

Across projects such as Collective Works and Relumine, Mischer’Traxler consistently treats interaction as an essential design material rather than an optional feature. Their installations reward observation instead of immediacy, asking visitors to slow down, experiment and remain attentive. In a culture that increasingly values instant gratification, the studio proposes curiosity as a form of resistance. Play, in Mischer’Traxler’s practice, is not loud or theatrical. It is quiet, investigative and deeply participatory. Their work suggests that discovery itself may be one of our oldest—and most enduring—forms of play.

curiosity cloud sees a suspended landscape of hand-blown glass bulbs inhabited by robotic insects | image courtesy of Mischer’Traxler Studio

Studio Wieki Somers interrupts everyday rituals

If public space teaches us how to behave collectively, domestic objects quietly shape our private habits.

For more than twenty years, Studio Wieki Somers has explored how familiar rituals can be gently disrupted through wit and material experimentation. Projects such as the Bathboat, which transforms bathing into a floating landscape, or the studio’s poetic furniture and lighting collections consistently reward tactile engagement over immediate comprehension.

Many of Somers’ works reveal themselves gradually. Materials behave unexpectedly. Functions unfold slowly. Objects ask to be touched rather than merely observed. In an age increasingly obsessed with frictionless design, Studio Wieki Somers embraces productive friction—the kind that slows us down long enough to notice our surroundings. Their objects don’t optimise everyday life, but rather enrich it.

Somers has long described design as a way of revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary, and her work consistently transforms familiar rituals into moments of quiet wonder. Rather than producing objects that disappear into everyday life through seamless usability, she creates pieces that remain gently present, asking users to pause, look twice and engage more carefully. That invitation to rediscover the everyday is itself a form of play—not loud or theatrical, but intimate, tactile and deeply human.

with projects like bathboat, studio wieki somers explores how familiar rituals can be gently disrupted | image courtesy of Studio Wieki Somers

raumlabor’s sedimente (2025) | image courtesy of raumlabor berlin

at the 17th exhibition of venice architecture biennale, raumlabor berlin reconstructs part of the ‘floating university’| image courtesy of raumlabor berlin

for mischertraxler’s idea of a tree, furniture is produced through a solar-powered process | image courtesy of Mischer’Traxler Studio

astana in rotterdam by studio wieki somers is designed as a sculpture that people can use and interact with | image courtesy of Studio Wieki Somers

project info:

name: Modified Social Benches & Appearing Rooms

designer: Jeppe Hein

type: Public furniture / social installation

name: Kitchen Monument & Floating University Berlin

designer: raumlabor berlin

type: Temporary civic pavilion & Experimental urban campus

name: Curiosity Cloud, The idea of a Tree & collective works

designer: Mischer’Traxler Studio

type: Interactive installation, experimental furniture series & collectible design

name: Bathboat & selected furniture and lighting works

designer: Studio Wieki Somers

type: Experimental object & collectible design

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