IN-PERSON Barcelona Livable Cities. Section B

Abstract

This paper discusses some working framework for analyzing hostile design. The relatively new term “hostile design” (also known with similar terms like “unpleasant architecture,” “defensive architecture,” and “disciplinary architecture”) refers to the deliberate use of design to prevent people from utilizing a space or an object in an undesirable manner. While hostile design may target different user groups (like teenagers, skateboarders, and addicted individuals), it is more often used against unhoused people. One of the most recognizable examples is the installation of dividers on benches to discourage individuals from sleeping on them. Unlike punitive measures, hostile design does not punish the homeless in an explicit way. Instead, it aims to remove the problem of homelessness out of sight, foreclosing the possibility of encounter, and hindering the unhoused people’s participation in the production of public space. While some examples, which clearly signal their function, may make the housed population morally uncomfortable, the most successful examples of hostile design disguise their true purpose. For example, while some strategies, like covering the surface by bike racks and boulders, are mostly unnoticed, this invisibility is sometimes amplified by added values, as with planters. In contemporary American cities, where visible homelessness is often rejected as part of urban beautification projects, many hostile designs are aesthetically pleasant. The growing literature on hostile design centers on its impact on the unhoused individuals, ignoring the majority, housed “public” under whose name hostile design is justified. This paper argues for expanding the study to the “public.” Using examples from my course on “hostile architecture,” I will discuss a few potential typologies and framework for studying hostile design that could account for the subtle mechanisms of disgusting the true purpose of hostile design.