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Urban Rest Corner

A furniture intervention at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station — a moment of pause inside the noise.

Year
2024
Role
Concept · Design · Team Project
Category
Furniture · Public Space · Inclusive Design
Urban Rest Corner

Context

Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station is in constant motion — a daily transit point for thousands of people, with an industrial language all of its own: cold materials, sharp edges, hard surfaces, fluorescent light. The brief was to look at how people actually behave inside that environment and to design a contrast — an object that lets someone slow down, gather themselves, and breathe inside a dynamic, noisy space.

Developed in the Space and User course under Galit Shabo and Hemdat Rosintzky, as a team project.

Process

  1. 01

    Observation and mapping: documenting where people actually pause at the station — the columns they lean on, the railings they turn into shelves, the corners that quietly become phone booths.

  2. 02

    Choosing a territory and sharpening the need: a railing near the main entrance, already used by passers-by to balance shopping bags and coffee cups. The brief narrowed to “a place to lean, a place to set down a bag, a place to rest a coffee.”

  3. 03

    Form development and materials: rounding sharp edges; using wood and textile to suggest the warmth of a living room — the deliberate opposite of the station’s industrial, cold language.

A woman uses the wooden rest object inside the station — leaning a tablet on it while standing
In use — passers-by treated the piece as if it had always been there.
Hand-drawn ideation sketches for ways to attach a rest surface to a railing
Ideation — exploring grip, surface, and attachment to the existing railing.
A takeaway coffee cup balanced on an improvised plywood ledge on a station railing
The original observation — the railing already being used as a shelf.
Wide black-and-white photo of Jerusalem Central Bus Station concourse
The environment — industrial, dynamic, loud.

Outcome

The final objects were installed in the real space. The response from passers-by exceeded our expectations — people approached the pieces naturally, used them as intended, and treated them as if they had always been there.

Next project

One-Hand Falafel Packaging →