A Bench for the Peace Watch

The Peace Watch has been keeping the watch in front of Christiansborg Castle in Copenhagen since October 2001 – that’s more than 6.500 days. They keep their watch to remind the Danes that we went to war at the turn of the century – for the first time since 1864.

In 2018 the Watch gratiously accepted my offer to design a bench/mobile command center to aid their efforts.

Together we initiated a participative design proces. Through several talks and 1:1 prototyping sessions we arrived at a final design. What emerged was a versatile mobile platform for urban activism. The production manual is freely shared under a CC license. If you choose to build the bench – please post a picture in the comments section and tell your story.

This project poses a range of basic questions to the design community – “What are we?”. “Do we care?”. “Are we obliged to help?”. “Don’t we have to stop producing “things” without a definite political purpose?”.

To me this is about the creation of purpose. About the inconvenient fact that the world will have to change… a lot. About using the power of the design proces to take a stand. The design community have an obligation to us all – we have to share the power to change the world.

Link to The Danish Art Workshops (in Danish)