Postal chairs courtesy of the Graffiti Research Lab reclaim public space in New York City.
In 1961, a New York City zoning board passed a regulation allowing developers and landlords to build additional rental floor space in exchange for providing public plazas and arcades on privately developed lots. This marked the advent of what has become known as “Privately Owned Public Space” in the city.
Over the last 40 years, “Incentive Zoning” as it is called has been instrumental to the creation of 503 plazas, arcades and other public areas which are concentrated primarily in the midtown area of Manhattan. In return, developers were allowed to build higher and wider structures and they received an estimated 20 million square feet of rental floor area.
When combined, “Privately Owned Public Spaces” have the potential to add an astonishing 824 acres or roughly 50 football fields to the public spaces utilized by New York residents.
This is according to Brendan J. FitzGerald of walkingtoursnyc.com. The site also quotes a three-and-half year study published in 2000 by Harvard Professor Jerold S. Kayden which found that 41% of “Privately Owned Public Spaces” were of “marginal utility” and “inaccessible or devoid of the kinds of amenities that attract public use.”
Taking these stats as a starting point, the Graffiti Research Lab have developed some ‘build your own’ chairs made out of postal boxes in order to reclaim these public spaces. [We note that they passed on using Fedex.]
A video of the chairs in action is viewable on the GRL site and, of course, on their Flickr photopool where you can also fall across lots of other examples of the clever outside-hacking stuff that GRL have done.
Video artists Addictive TV were back in town on the weekend, after a marathon session of live Olympic mashups in Europe. Braving the London weather on Friday night, they played to a crowd so enthusiastic that at least one of them had to be dragged half-naked off the roof. 
