Art Scene: Campus seesaws (Boston and Oakland)
Known as the “seesaws,” these combined playground furniture/benches were made specifically to foster a sense of community.
Title: Wooden Wave (2021)
Artists: Mark Lewis, Alexandria Batiste, Adrian Ramon, and Adele Biehl
Materials: Tropical hardwood plywood and Brazilian hardwood
Size: See-saw: 9’10” long. Benches: 34″ x 72″ x 34″
Locations: Boston (4) and Oakland (1)
About: Known as the “seesaws,” these combined playground furniture/benches were made specifically to foster a sense of community. Designed by four students in an architecture studio course called Furniture Urbanism, “Wooden Wave” is made of nearly 60 individual vertical pieces of wood all joined by a horizontal dowel system visible within the piece.
“We had all these ideas about furniture that’s like a jungle gym where there’s a sense of play involved,” says co-designer Adrian Ramon. “People can sit on it and face each other, so there’s this sense of connection.”
The original piece was made of wood that wouldn’t have survived outdoors, so the university commissioned five more out of weather-resistent tropical hardwoods: four as permanent fixtures on the Boston campus and one that was gifted to the Oakland campus as a symbol of the partnership between Northeastern University and Mills College.