20 Peculiar Public Seating Designs

These public seating designs all have one thing in common--they force interaction between strangers.

From benches with sliding seats that help you get up close and personal to balancing ones that force you to work together with your neighbor to attain comfort, the public seating innovations in this slideshow aren't for the shy.

Implications - Despite our connected online world, we are increasingly becoming distant and disconnected in our offline world. To regain a sense of community, city planners and commercial designers are creating public seating that encourages interaction rather than enabling privacy. By placing strangers in close proximity, designers hope to break down social barriers and incentivize citizens to interact with each other.