Robert Hammond: Chance Encounters

Welcome back to New York. You've just returned from a year in Rome. What do you miss the most about Italy?

I was sad to leave Rome but I love being back in New York and working on the High Line again. The year was such a gift and it’s embarrassing because it makes it sound like I did not enjoy my time there, but I have not missed it at all.You were in Rome as a Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, where you created Chance Encounter on the Tiber, an urban experiment involving 100 chairs and an unexpected musical performance on the Tiber River. Tell us about the project.

I spent a lot of time riding my bike along the abandoned walkways and embankments along the Tiber River. These walkways were built between 1876 and the 1920s to control the annual flooding of the river that would regularly inundate the city. Although the embankments have served their purpose of protecting Rome, for much of the year the walkways are essentially unused by Romans and visitors alike.

The site reminded me of my early experiences as one of the co-founders of the High Line project. I realized that making the walkway into a vibrant social open space didn’t have to be difficult, complex, or expensive. An alternative to grand architectural and urban planning schemes would be to focus on two simple issues: seating and programming. I wanted to try an experiment: place 100 movable park chairs on the open space along the Tiber River and see what happens. Where did this idea originate?

I was inspired by William Whyte’s studies in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, in which Whyte found that one of the most successful tools in creating vibrant spaces was the use of movable chairs. One of his most memorable findings is that people create ownership of public space by being able to control where and how they sit in the urban environment.Can you tell us about your collaboration with Lisa Bielawa?

I had originally intended to use the movable park chairs that one finds in public spaces all over the world, from the French manufacturer Fermob. I got a few samples in different colors and settled on red. On the High Line we use grey and Bryant Park uses green to blend in with the grass, but on the Tiber, I wanted them to stand out so they would catch people’s attention. Fermob could not deliver the chairs in time, so we found a similar black and brown chair at IKEA for a fourth of the price. To get a glossy, weatherproof finish, we had them painted at an auto body shop, using a color called Corso Rosso – Italian motorcar racing red. It made me want to have all my furniture at home repainted at an auto body shop.You staged the experiment in several different spots. Were the reactions/results similar or different for each of the locations?