Designing Out: A Framework for Studying Hostile Design

The rising issue of homelessness has led to the deployment of hostile design aimed at discouraging unhoused individuals from using urban and public spaces. A wholistic approach to the problem must address architecture as a cause (not as merely an innocent reflection of an entirely independent problem). This paper provides a literature review of definitions and methods of analyzing hostile design. The growing literature on hostile design mainly focuses on the design strategies and their impact on the unhoused individuals, ignoring the majority, housed population under whose name hostile design is justified. I argue for expanding the study of hostile design to account for the subtle mechanisms of disgusting the true purpose of hostile design.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.112.88

Volume Editors
Germane Barnes & Blair Satterfield

ISBN
978-1-944214-45-6