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Hostile Architecture is making more and more people uncomfortable

2021-10-18T10:32:00-04:00

Lately, though, I’ve found myself sitting on a lot of cramped metal benches of the kind that don’t invite you to linger long, or harsh concrete ones that leave you cold. That’s because public seating is becoming an endangered species. If a park bench is not being removed, the backup plan is often to make it uncomfortable. “Hostile architecture” — an urban design strategy intended to impede “antisocial” behavior — is proliferating all over the world.

Cities like San Francisco and Boston have quietly removed seating over the last decade in misguided efforts to curb outdoor sleeping. Interventions like sleep-preventing benches and other forms of cruel deterrents aimed at the homeless population have spilled over into the public sphere.

Recently, the Seattle Art Museum stirred some backlash by installing defensive architecture on its campus as part of an upgraded security plan authored by director Amanda Cruz. Activist collective Design as Protest won this year’s Design Trust for Public Space RFP competition with an initiative that looked to create an alternative to the policies. Other groups have taken measures into their own hands. The New York Times’ Jonathan Lee offers a defense of public seating here.

This anonymous L.A. artist is installing new bus-stop benches in the city's Eastside

2018-11-28T15:18:00-05:00

Some of his benches have become part of the fabric of the city — sat on and rained on, captured on Google Street View and even vandalized. Scrawled in tidy handwriting on one bench was, “i love it, thank you,” punctuated by a small heart. His greatest frustration is that whoever is removing them is leaving bus riders with no place to sit. The benches and their removal get at one of the more byzantine corners of transit bureaucracy in Los Angeles.

Realizing he had no place to rest at the bus stop near his Eastside home while recovering from a knee injury, this anonymous Los Angeles artist took matters into his own hands and began installing benches at neglected bus stops around the area, Carolina Miranda writes. Unsurprisingly, some of his benches have been removed, shedding light on L.A.'s frustratingly tedious process to approve the installation of more bus benches and shelters.

Data-collecting benches are making their way into cities

2017-07-17T16:47:00-04:00

A pair of USB ports on a console on the front of the bench provides juice from the solar panel mounted at lap level between the seats. Who wouldn’t want to hang out at a bench like this? It certainly catches the eye of passersby. What these kids might not realize, however, is that this bench is watching them back.

"Smart" benches are spreading—recently a series of them, manufactured by Soofa, was installed in a tiny neighborhood park next to I-77 on the north end of Charlotte, North Carolina with the intent of the neighborhood's analysis and redevelopment.

Soofa, founded in 2014 by three graduates of MIT Media Lab, is one of a handful of companies designing data-collecting street furniture. Their solar-powered benches register Wi-Fi enabled devices within 150 feet of them, sending data back to an office building in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. While the sensors can't access personal information from your phone, they pick up and remember your devices' MAC address. The technology allows cities and urban planners to count users of various public spaces, identifying when and for how long they're visited, and potentially optimizing their design.

"The line between collecting data for a valid public purpose and the unreasonable surveillance of private citizens can be tough to tease out. Beyond c...

Transformable Street Furniture For The Homeless

2014-07-10T13:48:00-04:00

Street furniture is mostly used during the day and not used during the night, except by some homeless, who spend the night on the public benches in parks and on squares. RainCity Housing, a non-profit that provides specialized housing for people living with mental illness and addiction, has launched multi-functional street furniture that can be used as seating during the day and ‘comfortable’ sleeping places for the homeless at night time.

Previously: Anti-homeless spikes are just the latest in 'defensive urban architecture'