NYC Parks and Battery Conservancy Announce Winner of The Battery Chair Design Competition

NYC Parks and The Battery Conservancy today announced that the Fleurt Chair by Canadian designer Andrew Jones is the winner of the first-ever design competition to create a moveable, outdoor chair for a New York City park.

The Fleurt selection marks the end of an historic juried competition that began when The Battery Conservancy made an open call for designs from students and professionals across North, Central, and South America in July 2012. The Conservancy received 679 submissions and engaged over 1,500 designers in November 2012, and announced the jury's top 50 designs in April 2013. From these, the final five were selected for prototype fabrication, which were then exhibited in the Castle Clinton National Monument to engage public comment.

From 679 submissions to 50 top designs selected to 5 prototypes fabricated, and now the winner, The Battery Chair Design Competition aimed to achieve three goals: create a distinctive, movable chair to be used on the Battery Oval? encourage innovative design in New York City's parks? and promote the flow of cross-cultural ideas throughout the Americas.

As the great urban theorist William Holly Whyte discovered: "Chairs enlarge choice: to move them into the sun, out of it, to make room for groups, move away from them. If you know you can move if you want to, you feel more comfortable staying put." It is with the principles of choice, comfort, and beauty that The Battery Conservancy began the chair competition, and it is these qualities that the Battery Oval espouses.

"Parks are not only green spaces, they are public spaces," said NYC Parks Commissioner Mitchell J. Silver, FAICP. "The Battery's competition to create a moveable outdoor chair has resulted in a unique, innovative and attractive park amenity for the public to enjoy."

"The Battery is one of our country's gateway parks," remarked Warrie Price, founder and president of The Battery Conservancy. "We wanted to embrace this unique quality of the park to elicit global ideas and to demonstrate to our millions of annual visitors that great design belongs in public spaces."

Andrew Jones' design impulse for the Fleurt chair came from imagining how a field of chairs could poetically respond to the lawn of the Battery Oval, a major meeting ground for Lower Manhattan. Using a single chair in repetition, the view across the Battery Oval is transformed by the whimsical suggestion of sun-loving flowers floating in a field. Fleurt stretches out, encouraging visitors to do the same. The lawn setting suggests a chair whose posture is more casual than that of a café chair. Fleurt announces openness and photogenic warmth. Fleurt envelops the sitter with comfortable lounging curves, adding pleasure to people-watching, talking, eating, reading, posing and reposing. Canadian designer Andrew Jones intended for this archetypal floral form to be constantly rearranged by visitors, creating a "memorable, diaphanous landscape."

Andrew Jones, the Fleurt designer, will be awarded a $10,000 prize given by The Battery Conservancy. With sponsorship from generous donors, the winning chair design will then be fabricated for use on the Battery Oval, a three-acre oval lawn opening at the end of the year in The Battery.

The public can visit the winning design at Castle Clinton at the exhibition that was created in July 2014 to ask the public to "See, Sit, and Select" their favorite chair. Within the first few weeks of the exhibition tens of thousands of individuals interacted with the prototype chairs and stimulated over 4,000 comments. One visitor said of the Fleurt, "Amazing color, design, strength and meaning" and another commented, "It looks pretty and is also SO comfortable."

To develop the first movable chair for a New York City park, The Battery Conservancy enlisted world-renowned jurors, a dynamic board of advisers, international media partners and comments and feedback from the public. The distinguished jurors are Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator, Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Architecture? Allison Arieff, design writer, The New York Times, Editor, The Urbanist? Fernando Campana and Humberto Campana, designers, Sao Paulo? Rob Forbes, Founder of Design Within Reach and CEO of

Public Bikes? and Mario Schjetnan, Co-Founder & Director of Mario Schjetnan/Grupo de Diseño Urbano, Mexico City.