NYC Coordinated Street Furniture

The Coordinated Street Furniture Franchise is being installed and operated by Cemusa throughout New York City for the next twenty years. Grimshaw commissioned Billings Jackson to design the exclusive range for Cemusa, following the success of previous street furniture collaborations in Spain and South America.

Billings Jackson worked closely with key stakeholders in New York including the NYC Department of Transportation and, notably, the Art Commission, to design furniture that is at once elegant and fit for purpose. Also involved was the Newsstand Operators Association, in order to understand its members’ varied and idiosyncratic needs.

The consultation process was both highly complex and very rewarding, in that the dialogue between the designers and City representatives resulted in street furniture that is already a source of great pride for the City. The New York City Art Commission Award for Excellence in Design, awarded to the range in 2007, is the clearest expression of this success.

There will be 3300 bus shelters ultimately, across the five boroughs of New York, together with newsstands and twenty automatic public toilets. The latter is a first for the City and another symbol of the successful collaboration with stakeholders. The intention is to extend the range to include a waste bin, news rack and public information kiosk.

The designs are all highly sensitive to context, in recognition of the importance of making minimal visual or spatial intervention in the urban landscape. As such, the bus shelter has only two ground fixings. The fully glazed rear panel does not obstruct the street facades and the simple cantilevered roof panels are translucent, providing solar shading and soft light.

Both the newsstand and toilet share the shape and modulation of the bus shelter’s roofline. The canopy can extend past the walls for additional shelter and integrated lighting gives the furniture presence when it is dark. The overall designs are intended to convey vibrancy while affording security to the users.

Robustness and durability were also key drivers. Components include high-resistance tempered and laminated glass and stainless steel: high quality, self-finishing materials that will withstand heavy use and ensure that the furniture to built to last.

The various elements of the range form a ‘family’ of objects, bringing coherence to the New York transit system. Billings Jackson has successfully drawn from New York’s established vernacular for utility objects, where architectural interest takes the place of superfluous decoration, to evolve a design language that is highly distinctive while sitting lightly in its environment.

The bus shelter was awarded a Bronze Award in the International Design Excellence Awards 2008, co-sponsored by the industrial Designers Society of America and BusinessWeek.