The world as we know it is rapidly urbanizing, where cities evolve to aid the growing population. However, regrettably, most urban developments do not prioritize inclusivity.
Also known as ‘anti-homeless architecture,’ Hostile Architecture has caused public outrage and sparked a conversation about how urban spaces should be designed. The rise of this distressing trend is said to be for the ‘beautification’ of cities contrary to what it actually does to oppose inclusivity which only leads to the alienation of communities. The vital response to the growing population should heed to designing urban public spaces that challenges hostile architectural practices.
Before exploring innovative design against Hostile Architecture, it is important to briefly define it and understand how it obstructs the progress of community-driven design.
What is Hostile Architecture?
Hostile architecture pertains to urban defensive measures that aim to redirect people’s unwanted behavior in public spaces, frequently targeting the vulnerable population. This design strategy makes cities unwelcoming as it highlights inequality rather than solving social problems. More often than not, this design is sneaked into urban planning without public conversation.
Many major cities across different countries have been practicing Hostile Architecture. This includes segmented benches and anti-homeless spikes.
Calgary, Canada
The rubber barriers installed on top of planters, which could otherwise be seating areas, are direct example of how a public space can be redesigned to cut off people from sitting or lying down. On the other hand, addressing those experiencing homelessness and troubled citizens as a ‘consistent population’ is also problematic. It is possible to consider safety precautions without neglecting the need for adept community-driven design. These urban modifications seem to be evident in cities with cold climates, where spaces for the public are designed to limit individuals who are homeless instead of providing immediate shelter for them.
Calgary’s transit platforms and bus stops have heating during the winter season. Be that as it may, the city somehow reduces its use to only the ‘capable population’ by enforcing curvy benches for individual seating with metal ridges that do not serve practical use and thus make it uncomfortable for extended stays. These bus stops during winter have significant potential to provide urgent assistance to those in need.
New York
Hostile Architecture can be quite subtle. Unless you examine the details of public design elements, these defensive designs often go unnoticed. For instance, this undulated subway grate with bulging metal parts stops homeless people from sleeping on it. These grates, which vent hot air, could be favorable to homeless people during winter if it weren’t for certain metal parts sticking out and their uneven surface, which makes these grates uncomfortable and painful to use.
Critics continuously argue that rather than confronting the housing crisis, defensive urban design measures only criminalizes homelessness.
The Camden Bench, London
The Camden Bench is another example of hostile architecture found on the streets of London. This block of concrete bench was carved with uneven and angled surfaces, making it uncomfortable to sit on and an impractical public element. The design intends to effectively discourage loitering and unwanted public conduct, making it impossible to sleep on and to skate.
The Importance of Designing Against Hostile Architecture
The key players in shaping spaces where communities can thrive and interact are Architects and Urban Planners. Hostile Architecture is an opposing force to the primary objective of urban planning: to design environments that are sustainable, livable, and healthy to meet the needs of all citizens. It is crucial to design against hostile architecture because it marginalizes the vulnerable population and parades unseemingly systematic inequalities. Nonetheless, architecture could be anything but hostile.
Architecture is a Solution
Architecture has long been accounted as an instrument to solve various issues in society, and it should continue to abide by that reputation. However, innovations such as defensive or hostile design strategies, which prioritizes exclusion, are neglectful in nature and counterproductive for the general progress of society. Architecture should give precedence to urban design that is inclusive of the well-being of all members of society, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
Architecture for Social Good
Hostile architecture aims to make people stay briefly in spaces. This approach limits people’s interaction with each other and with the space. By doing so, hostile architecture reduces opportunities for chance encounters which is a foundation for good communities to form. Human-centered design is inclusive design, it facilitates social good by encouraging interactions and community-building through welcoming spaces.
Advancing Inclusivity: Innovative Design Strategies for Welcoming Spaces
There are numerous case studies that exhibit innovations in inclusive design and demonstrate how thoughtful design can address the needs of the entire society. Addressing homelessness in particular, there are notable examples of public infrastructures developed by Sean Godsell Architects.
Park Bench House
A universal component of urban infrastructure design briefs is that the design outcome must exclude the possibility of the appropriation by the displaced of the designed object. In other words the designer is briefed to be unsympathetic and exclusive. – Sean Godsell
Sean Godsell, having that statement in mind, proceeded to conceptualize a forward-thinking approach to inclusive design by rethinking a public bench. Godsell sought to create the Park Bench House that redefines traditional design briefs and transforms it into a versatile infrastructure that provides both seating and shelter. This work highlights a shift from an ‘out of sight, out of might’ design strategy that is quite exclusory to more empathic design principles. This park bench is not merely a seating element anymore but a compassionate architecture.
The Park Bench House is part of a series of prototypical housing proposals that Sean Godsell Architects produces. Another design that is part of the said series is the Bus Shelter House.
Bus Shelter House
Similar to the Park Bench House, the Bus Shelter House challenges the norms of typical public infrastructures by providing a compassionate approach to design for the public. This infrastructure is a bus stop which converts into emergency overnight accommodation. The yellow advertising hoarding is detailed as a blanket, food, and water dispenser.
Rethinking public infrastructure demands to make it convertible and adaptable to meet the needs of the public. This approach stresses the importance of designing spaces that are not limited to their function but rather evolve based on the needs of the community, ensuring accessibility for all. It is only appropriate to have public infrastructure that addresses immediate and long-term issues, fostering a proactive humane urban environment.
Hostile Architecture, in contrast to compassionate designs, only offers desolation to the public good and only ever serves particular individuals, often poorly masquerading as a beautification initiative for cities.
In the case that hostile architecture serves to exclude, on a larger scale, compassionate design has the capacity to transform communities by promoting connections and inclusivity in spaces. Surpassing individual public infrastructure, there are innovative urban projects that redefine what it means to provide a welcoming environment.
Superkilen Park, Copenhagen Denmark
“We proposed public participation as the driving force of the design leading towards the maximum freedom of expression. By transforming public procedure into proactive proposition we curated a park for the people by the people – peer to peer design – literally implemented.” Bjarke Ingels – Founder & Creative Director, BIG
The park is a massive exhibition of urban design best practices. Superkilen Park now represents the city’s ethnic diversity, a collective design effort that invites participation from all citizens. The park was designed with great consideration to cultures and elements from different backgrounds of the people thus creating a space of inclusivity. Through collaborating with the residents the designers were able to curate 100 objects from 60 cultures and effectively incorporate them throughout the park, making it a successful community-driven design on an urban scale.
The stretch of the park is divided into three color-coded areas that are strategically placed and modified according to the built environment surrounding it. The red square is an extension of the adjacent sports hall, the space offers a range of active experiences, may it be recreational and or cultural activities. The black square is the heart of Superkilen Park where there is a Moroccan fountain where locals can meet and interact. Lastly, the green square showcases a span of natural landscaping with vantage points over the surroundings.
Superkilen Park provides a positive counterpoint to hostile architecture. This type of development exemplifies that urban design can be functional and inclusive. Instead of perpetuating social inequalities, we should design against them if not solve social injustices and promote fairness.
Architecture for All
Architects and urban planners should adhere to a more empathetic design approach. On the grounds that everyone deserves to feel safe and be respected in public spaces. It is a matter of upholding human dignity to design against hostile architecture by guaranteeing that public areas are not used to marginalize or dehumanize individuals.
Ironically, it doesn’t even achieve its basic goal of making us feel safer. There is no way of locking others out that doesn’t also lock us in. The narrower the arrow-slit, the larger outside dangers appear. Making our urban environment hostile breeds hardness and isolation. It makes life a little uglier for all of us. – Andreou, 2015
Flexible Spaces
To counter hostile architecture is to design more adaptable public spaces and elements that can offer multiple purposes, from a place to sit on, and sleep, to socializing.
Human-Centered Design
Another strategy to mitigate defensive architecture is to design a space that enhances the community’s well-being by being inclusive and accessible for the sake of the cohesion of society.
Participatory Design
Lastly, ensure the involvement of local communities in the decision-making process of a public space. Through the public’s opinion and perspectives, designers can effectively create environments that are cordial to all dwellers, in the city and on this planet.
Designing against Hostile, defensive, anti-homeless architecture establishes that every individual regardless of their predicament in life, deserves a sense of belongingness. Architecture is for all; hostile design strategies in architecture are heartless and serve no one.
