A Mackintosh chair and bus stop benches

When I visited Glasgow School of Art, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh at the close of the 19th Century, it made me very conscious of the power of design. The building was full of innovative devices, which once inside, brought comfort. For instance, the library ceiling was supported by four timber columns and you can hear the squeaks from people walking across the floor above, which gives you an illusion as if you are close to nature - in the middle of a wood maybe. The famous Mackintosh chairs with the long backrests were designed to create an enclosed and confidential space when placed - 4,6 or 8- around a table, creating an intimate atmosphere for people to concentrate on socializing or discussing the series social issues of the day. Traveling up and down the building, following a tour guide, listening to her talk, I felt as if the architect himself was looking at us – scrutinizing our behavior to ensure his intention to influence us through the devices he built – from chair to building – from school to church.

The tour guide informed us about another chair he designed for tearoom maids. They were implicitly designed to be quite uncomfortable so that the maids would not get lazy – wasting time sitting around gossiping or whatever. I think the story was told to tickle us a little. It is surely funny, to think that Mackintosh had no doubt about the maid’s natural laziness as if it had been printed in their DNA. And also to think that this perceived genetic laziness could be, albeit temporarily, healed by a little chair.

For me, with some exaggeration, it is the didactic tendency I see in his work - decisiveness and little arrogance – that I find attractive. He does not seem to allow for any personal choice as to how his designs might be used: the building must be toured in certain order, chairs for socializing or just resting — the narrative he has prepared would unfold in the way intended. Mackintosh’s works also seem to reflect his time - the pride and hope of the new Modern era. An era where developments in product design, informed and dictated a person’s day-to-day life. Today, people are perceived to be free from the didactic nature of much of this work – whether it is Mackintosh’s tearoom maid chairs or other products designed in the Modernist era. An absolute belief in the possibility of human being was, I think, the core of modernism – Mackintosh was, after all, trying to correct a perceived inbred laziness in the tearoom maid, his chair design provided ‘moral instruction’. What Mackintosh’s maid’s chair reminded me of was the benches I see everyday at (almost) any London bus stop.

The notorious bus stop benches, if you could call them benches, were certainly not planned to comfort anyone waiting for a bus. The seating is a little too high, far too narrow for anyone to sit comfortably. It is even impossible to put any baggage on it as it is angled – tipping towards the floor. The benches are designed to be uncomfortable, to keep away unwanted ‘customers’ whose aim is to find anywhere decent to rest. If you are only waiting for a bus, you should not require anything more than an oblique bar!
The two different seating designs – Mackintosh’s maidens chair and the bus stop bench - seem to be identical in a way. They are designed to encourage the user to stand up after a while and do what they are supposed to do (serve customers/ get on the bus/ move-on). But are they?

I will detour a little to find an answer for the question.

What divides post/late modernity from modernity? This question itself may well be pointless as it is often argued that such thing as postmodern never exists. However, many would agree that in the so-called developed countries, the idea of how a society is formed has changed drastically in the past few decades. A criminologist Jock Young regards the shift in terms of inclusiveness and exclusiveness. ‘The transition from modernity to late modernity can be seen as a movement from an inclusive to an exclusive (Italics in original) society. That is from a society whose accent was on assimilation and incorporation to one that separates and excludes’. (p.7, Young)
Modern society (especially in France) praised liberalism and democracy, which strived for national unity regardless of its members’ religion, gender, color and so on. We still inherit the liberal, democratic gene of modernism, or at least we believe so. It is politically incorrect to discriminate people because of their skin color, nationality, religious belief, gender and so on. People’s lives were not supposed to be restricted by circumstances of birth. In this respect, present society is on the extended line of modern society, not the opposite pole
In one way, we have became more tolerant towards difference partly because we had to.
‘In modernity, as we have seen, the deviant other appears as a distinct, minority phenomenon in contrast to the vast majority consensus of absolute values which it lacks and, thus, by its very existence confirms rather than threatens. In late modernity the deviant other is everywhere.’ (p.15, Young)
However, I would argue this multi-cultural, cosmopolitanism is what makes our society less tolerant towards the others in another way. This contradiction is examined by Hiroki Azuma.

‘(…) in today’s developed society, the tyrannical or symbolic power of nation that put the whole society together has declined to certain extent. As a result emerged the multi-cultural society of the 90s, which admits (at least superficially) and even encourages the diversity of its members.
This kind of tolerance, however, is supported by the spreading idea of a security that ‘eliminates’ and ‘isolates’ the dangerous other.’ (Azuma, 2005)

Even though the idea of nation was very much improvised at the beginning of the 18th century and there was a struggle to set a standard of what makes a ‘nation’ state it was easier to set a standard of what was seen as ‘deviant other’. We were less tolerant towards diversity; the deviant other was an illness for a society to be healed. The model of this ‘healing’ is famously depicted by Michel Foucault’s study on the panopticon prison.
‘According to Foucault, this “internalization of gaze” is the model of disciplinal authority. (…) In the modern time, the watchman may be absent, or rather, it is preferable that he is not present. Once the object of surveillance internalizes the gaze, the ‘watching’ functions most effectively.’ (2005, Azuma)

The Modernist epoch’s process of healing the ‘illness’ was dependent on the individual’s ‘morality’. The importance of education during this period was to inject morality into individuals who in-turn, as adults, become part of the ordered society.
‘Modernity sought to assimilate; its problem was not the difficulty of the task but the notion of diversity. The stress was on monotone, monoculture, perched, as one might alliteratively put it, on a monorail of progress starting at the ‘primitive’ world of National Geographic and ending in middle class America (…)’. (p.60, Young)
Modernity has succeeded to demonstrate a way we must all follow. However, as Young presents here, the monolithic ideology of modernism contained an arrogance and intolerance of a kind (attributes which can still be found in some contemporary design).

Probably today, we are less arrogant towards difference, or at least we are trying. In any cosmopolitan city, we are entitled to have any belief and speak freely about it.
Young observes that the factor besides economic growth and post Fordism that destabilizes a society is ‘(…) the emergence of a more pluralistic society, one in which people’s sense of personal security, the stability of their being, becomes more insecure’. (p.14 Young). Now there is a fine balance of tolerance. ‘Diversity became tolerated, indeed differences in lifestyle were celebrated while difficulty became less and less tolerable’. (p.64, Young)
As a society becomes more pluralistic, the effect of its disciplinary systems are eventually questioned.
‘According to him [Deleuze], the disciplinary systems of authority system peaked at the beginning of 20th century and are now in decline. What is rising instead is a ‘management’ system that is supported by information technology and computer networks. Disciplinary systems required an environment such as school and factory to embed standard rules into individuals. ‘Management’ society, on the other hand, doesn’t require such a place, it simply turns individuals to controllable numbers.’ (Azuma, 2005)
‘Disciplinary tactics that are represented by the panopticon were operated in order to “forge one’s soul” by introducing a superhuman observational gaze into an individual’s consciousness. But today’s monitoring system is no longer interested in something as sentimental as ‘an individual with inner thought’. The system does not construct a subject related to an eye. The main issue is not a moralist agenda to eradicate crime, but to minimize the risk of damage to society by restricting crime into certain zone.’ (sakai, quoted by Azuma, 2005)
Especially after 9/11, we live in the world that is increasingly paranoid about potential criminals/terrorists who are disguised as ordinary citizens. There is increased pressure to restrict and eliminate any risk, in a increasingly mobile environment.
‘The actuarial stance is calculative of risk, it is wary and probabilistic, it is not concerned with harm minimization, it does not seek a world free of crime but one where the best practices of damage limitation have been put in place; not a utopia but a series of gated heavens in a hostile world. (…) Both individuals and institutions face the problems of sorting out the safe from the risky and doing so in ways which are no longer cast iron and certain but merely probabilistic. (p.66, Young)

It is this probabilistic theory that is at the centre of risk management.
Today’s CCTV watch tower might function as placebo for paranoid shoppers, but no one expects it to ‘heal’ a criminal. Its role is not to scare a potential burglar and through its mechanical/digital gaze expect him to question his conscience but, rather, to simply recognize and separate strangers – the lone shopper from the lone terrorist. By no means is the watch tower dead yet – today you can buy fake CCTV cameras to site around your home. Cameras, real and fake, are at shopping centres, at the entrance of privileged areas and so on. However, their role seems to have changed. The system of discipline that was once lamented by Foucault is now enthusiastically praised by security paranoid citizens of American suburbia and elsewhere.

…. And so, the benches we witness at an ordinary London bus stop or international airport are a great example of the ‘soft’ politics that we have seen develop in the 21st Century (and embraced in much contemporary design – often under the auspices of ‘problem-solving’). The scale may vary, but bus stops and airports are temporary places (or non-places) where anonymity and mobility is the key. They are the symbols of this liberal and multi-cultural world. Transport portals welcome people from innumerable places traveling to countless destinations, but the welcome isn’t quite so accommodating for people who want to stay there, let alone sleep in these non-places. Thus the ingenious device to separate the user and unwanted stranger is born.
Both chairs we have observed, Mackintosh’s and the contemporary bench, as examples of uncomfortable chairs are very similar at a glance. Both are designed to prevent people to sit on them for too long. However, the ideas/ideology behind them which ultimately informs their purpose are very different.

Now Mackintosh’s meanness seems to be so innocent that it is almost lovable.

Yukiko Murai 2008

List of references

Young, Jock The Exclusive Society: Social Exclusion, Crime and Difference in Late Modernity
1992, SAGE Publications Ltd, London

Hiroki, Azuma Information Liberalism
http://www.hajou.org/infoliberalism/
(the original text was run on Chuokoron 07/2002-10/2003)