Random Lift Button
In 2002, I installed a small button labelled “R” alongside the regular floor numbers in lifts at the University of Plymouth. Press it, and the lift takes you somewhere random.
The idea grew out of a frustration with how buildings — and lifts especially — are designed for efficiency. They take you straight from where you are to where you’re supposed to be, skipping everything in between: other floors, other people, the unplanned encounters that actually make a building feel alive.
The Random Lift Button breaks that. It hands your destination over to chance, and occasionally drops you somewhere you’d never normally go.
Remarkably, it’s still there — still functioning, more than two decades later. Recently it found an unexpected second life: a YouTube documentarist called BenO discovered it, recorded himself using it, and his video has now had over 63,000 views.
Travelling in code never felt so good.