This project was initiated to explore why rest in public space is often hidden, stigmatized, or restricted and how design can be used as a tool to question and shift those norms. Public rest is rarely treated as a right or a need in the urban landscape. Instead, it is often reduced to short, seated breaks, constrained by spatial and social codes that govern who is allowed to pause, where and for how long. My aim was to investigate how interior architecture can challenge these limitations and reimagine rest as something visible, varied and valued.

To do this, I used a combination of site analysis, bodily form exploration and full-scale prototyping. I studied resting practices across cultures and times, scanned my own body in various positions and worked iteratively with form to create a structure that accommodates multiple postures, not just sitting, but leaning, reclining and pausing. The project draws from the familiar Stockholmssoffan, a bench deeply rooted in the collective image of public rest in Sweden. By distorting and reconfiguring its geometry, I sought to expand its symbolic and functional possibilities.

The result is not a conventional bench, but an open spatial structure that invites diverse bodily interactions and challenges the expectations of how rest should look and behave in public space. It becomes both a place for recovery and a quiet protest against exclusionary design, a call for environments that allow softness, slowness and vulnerability.

This project positions interior architecture as a discipline with the ability and responsibility to shape public life beyond efficiency and utility. By working with materiality, atmosphere and the scale of the human body, interior architects can uncover overlooked needs and propose spatial alternatives that foster presence, care, and dignity. In a time where exhaustion is normalized and rest is politicized, such gestures are not only relevant, but necessary.