No (No Smoking)
Smoking has become a symbol of the conflict between individual freedom and collective responsibility. The cigarette is a reminder in a culture that aspires to share health care costs that one may not necessarily have the right to be self-destructive. Increasing efforts to reduce smoking and second-hand smoke in public places have created a new urban outlaw. Replacing the integrated lifestyle of smoking and drinking, eating, and working—the lone smoker now stands outside the “no–smoking” establishment as a tragi–comic icon of smoking’s last heroic gasp. Could architecture serve this band of outsiders? A system of interventions sprinkled around Amsterdam offers privileged spaces in which individuals could have a guiltless cigarette and connect to a smoker’s virtual city within the city. Private shafts of space attached to the exterior of “no smoking” locations act as chimneys that lift second-hand smoke above the streets. The smoker can enter with his/her face obscured, yet body on display under a building-sized dunce cap like the intransigent student of yore. Within, a smoke detector activates a touch screen connected with a private network when it senses the first drag.
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