Design & architecture
Hostile architecture and the quiet politics of public space
11 min
Spikes on ledges, armrests dividing benches, and sloped surfaces are deliberate design choices about who is welcome. Examine the subtle ways the built environment controls behavior and excludes people.
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Show notes
The Camden Bench uses jagged concrete and asymmetrical slopes to make lying down physically impossible.
Nineteenth-century London installed metal urine deflectors to protect building corners from public relief.
Blue lighting in public bathrooms prevents drug use by making it difficult to locate veins.
Robert Moses designed low Long Island overpasses to block city buses from reaching public beaches.
Window sills slanted at forty-five-degree angles prevent pedestrians from sitting or resting on ledges.
Detroit's six-foot-high Eight Mile wall was built to physically enforce racial and class segregation.
In this episode
- 1Intro1 min
- 2The Vocabulary of Exclusion2 min
- 3The Camden Bench and the Engineering of Discomfort3 min
- 4The Roots of Control: CPTED and Historical Precedents3 min
- 5Collateral Damage and the Future of the Commons2 min
- 6Outro1 min
Sources
- Unpleasant Design & Hostile Urban Architecture - 99% Invisible
- Hostile architecture
- Hostile architecture: designing poverty out of sight - Geographical
- Engineered to Move: How New York City Designs Behavior Into Public Spaces – The Science Survey
- Design Against Humanity_Hostile Architecture paper 2023
- Hostile architecture and defensive design are the subtle design features that make cities feel more hostile.
- The Architecture of Control: Are Cities Secretly Designed to Shape Human Behavior? - Whispers From The Dark - Podcast Episode - Podscan.fm
- Binchtopia: God Forbid We Linger
- Form Follows Hostility: Defensive Architecture, Modernist Design, and the Exclusivity of Public Space
- This urban planner says hostile architecture makes public spaces inequitable
- Unpleasant Design & Hostile Urban Architecture
- Behavioral designs defined: how to understand and why it is important to differentiate between “defensive,” “hostile,” “disciplinary”, and other designs in the urban landscape
- Design crimes: How 'hostile architecture' is quietly hurting our cities - ABC News
- Hostile Architecture: 'Design Crimes' Campaign Gets Bars Removed from Benches - 99% Invisible
- Camden bench
- From ASBO to Injunction - The Camden Bench as a Symbol of the UK’s Legacy of Intolerance. — ANTHROPOLOGY OF ARCHITECTURE
- The Camden Bench - Futility Closet
- Hostile architecture | History, Definition, Examples, & Facts - Britannica
- Camden bench
- Designing Out: A Framework for Studying Hostile Design
- The Anatomy of Hostile Architecture: A Form-Function-Intent Typology for Urban Furniture and Urban Interior Space | Acta Architectonica et Urbanistica
- Behavioral designs defined: how to understand and why it is important to differentiate between “defensive,” “hostile,” “disciplinary”, and other designs in the urban landscape
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