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. — The New York Times
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.
7 Comments
I clicked on this story, thinking that I had to learn more about a firm that is named Hostile Architecture. :)
A rising and scary trend in American public life is the act of depriving ourselves of anything nice because a homeless person might also use it.
it's starting to seem like we should just help out people going through problems if we want to enjoy our world. who would have predicted that?
Vitruvius said architecture should encompass "Strength, function, and beauty" Going one for three isn't going to cut it.
German artist Fabian Brunsing created the Pay & Sit bench in 2008.
As far as I can tell Chinese 'pay to sit' benches (as cited in the NYT and Guardian) and are just propaganda.
The design of projects like this is anti-social behavior not homelessness.
This is not a new phenomenon. When I worked in an architecture firm in Houston in the early 1970s, their recently-completed high-rise sited across the Greyhound bus station right in downtown had purposefully- designed planters that were too high for someone to sit on [so told me the partner who was in charge of the project] though supposedly contributing to the "character" along the street.
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