WORK MOTION INK BOOKS about

THE BENCHES SPEAK2026, thesis

Examining the park bench as an artefact of humanity, serving as a tool to communicate the human condition.

Through a brief history of its evolution from a seat of prestige amongst male magistrates in Ancient Greek agoras to a resting spot for the night, the park bench reveals itself as a timeline of our ever-fluctuating state of affairs, beliefs, and ambitions: an inherent device that chronicles the political, societal, and cultural aspects of a place and people.

A six-day observation of a picnic bench outside my bedroom window revealed to me anecodtes of other people's lives. I became obsessed with benches as a medium of storytelling. My first step was trying to understand the history of the park bench: the creators, the manufacturers, the evolution. Diagrams, newspaper articles, books on public space, New York's housing crisis and hostile architecture.

It took about three weeks to realise my dorm room had a door that connected me to the outdoors—one that led to a bustling community park not 12 minutes away, littered with benches, that I'd been frequenting for years. And that is how I found myself spending hours in Fort Greene Park, observing life as it passed and paused on slats of wood and metal.

It was a chilly morning the second time I went out to the park. Not cold enough for a jacket, but just right for a jumper to keep the biting breeze at bay.

I approached people on benches and asked to take their photo. I meandered up a curved path, turned left, and came across an elderly gentleman and his wife. He was a Pratt alum, class of 1964. We talked about changing curricula, politics, activism, and art. After I snapped a shot of the couple, we said our goodbyes. I’d never been more determined to see a project through than after that chance encounter.

Ed's picture from the Prattonia yearbook of 1964. He was part of the Graphic Arts Department.

After speaking with those of the present, I set out to meet those of the past.

Memorial plaques are statements of history scattered throughout public spaces: easy to access and read, and just as easy to pass by without a second thought. Some are steeped in fact, while others carry a more subjective tone. Either way, they define parts of who we are, or who we were. I documented over 100 memorial bench plaques and searched for the names on them, trying to piece together each person’s life story. I eventually settled on three men who each lived very different lives: David Plimpton, Jeremy Kirkland, and Scott Friedel.

In each book, a vellum page shows the view from his bench, with a dot of gold leaf marking its location on a map of Fort Greene Park. The books are riso-printed in black and metallic gold ink on black cardstock. Each is screw-bound and measures 8" × 2", mimicking the format of a typical plaque.

3 visual controls for the books:

1. A clipping published on the birth date (or approximate) of the person from their local newspaper

2. An image of current life from their bench

3. An image of their memorial park bench

3 conditions to make a memorial book:

1. The person must have a traceable history from birth to death.

2. The person lived in Fort Greene/Brooklyn

3. Information on the person must be as truthful as possible based on primary and secondary resources.

An 80-page dossier on the park bench — and the memorial plaques bolted to it — as a lens on memory and public space: a history of the bench's design and use in ancient Greek agoras to increasingly prevalent hostile architecture, a study of Fort Greene Park's Olmsted-designed origins and its benches today, and an argument for how park bench memorial plaques rewrite, preserve, and document whose lives get remembered as neighborhoods gentrify.

anish lahiri