17 ms·
Unpleasant Design
- swah 10y agoA friend had a shoe store downtown and one of the most unpleasants things about it was that every night someone would piss in the front gate/door. How do you deter that? He closed the business (not only for that reason, of course) and has a store in the mall now.
- reitanqild 10y agoInstall a camera if allowed. If the mere threat of being caught on film was not enough then find out when this would typically happen in the night and hire a couple of security guards for a night or two. Not sure if it would work but not impossible.
- jessaustin 10y agoMaybe first one could install a bright light, controlled by a motion detector? There are lots of nooks in a city that can be pissed upon in the relative privacy of darkness. If that doesn't do the trick, then a camera could be used, if a sign were posted notifying the public of that use.
- dsr_ 10y agoMove the door so that it's flush to the outside wall, rather than providing a niche.
- swah 10y agoNot doable, it was something like this: https://www.google.com.br/maps/@-30.0309088,-51.2269515,3a,75y,101.31h,85.4t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sawqjOAmZrj_8viy7Kja71A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=pt-BR https://www.google.com.br/maps/@-30.0309088,-51.2269515,3a,7...
- chriswarbo 10y agoInstall a urinal nearby?
- viraptor 10y agoThis is what the city can do. What can you do as a shop owner?
- swah 10y agoElectrifying the metal doors comes to mind, but its illegal, evil, and probably disproportionate to the damage done by the drunkard.
- hnal943 10y agoWhy should we accommodate public urination? Just because someone does something, does it automatically mean it's dehumanizing to deter it?
- geon 10y agoSomething I didn't see mentioned in the article are aluminum benches. They act as a giant heatsink and makes your butt ice cold if you sit too long. They have them at the Copenhagen airport.
- dpark 10y agoI'm not sure that's "unpleasant design" so much as outright bad design. Aluminum is cheap and easy to extrude into rectangular tubes suitable for use as bench slats. Unfortunately aluminum is a pretty terrible material for this use. It's freezing cold in the winter, as you noted. It can also be hot enough to burn in the summer sun. And it's hard. And it's ugly (when used this way). I don't think any of this is intended to deter people from sleeping on it. It's just a cheap way to install a bench.
- smonff 10y agoThere is some artist working on this in a critical way that could have been quoted in the post: - http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/relaxation-situationnelle http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/relaxation-situationnelle - http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/paris-a-place-to-stay http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/paris-a-place-to-stay - http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/skate-anti-skate http://www.the-wabsite.com/works/skate-anti-skate
- Anthony-G 10y agoThe “leaning benches” remind me of the mercy seats found in late medieval churches. Old or infirm monks and other clergy could use them for support during long prayers for which standing was obligatory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misericord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misericord
- fatdog 10y agoWhy do people sleep on benches instead of shelters? When you look at a typical homeless person nest, it is arranged to protect them from theft and violence. It's either in a well populated place, usually with middle class people who will report violence, or where they can hear people coming, has good visibility, a corner for their back, etc. When you look at a typical homeless shelter, it has bunks or cots, no security, people with no reason to report violence, and it's full of desperate homeless people with addictions and erratic mental illness. They don't want to be around each other because they know it's dangerous. Why would you go to a shelter unless you were looking for trouble? It's full of predators. Charitable organizations don't give homeless people privacy for fear of the human things they will do, like drink, use drugs, have sex, etc. The street or a park provides relative privacy and freedom, within walking distance of services. Given most homeless people are men, the solutions are more likely to involve providing basic physical privacy and security than comfort or sympathy.
- bluedino 10y agoShelters do have rules and many homeless don't want to go there (or have been banned) because they don't want to follow the rules.
- ethanbond 10y agoRules like "don't do drugs" which is 100% medically irresponsible and unrealistic? I'm not sure of a good solution here, but this statement really begs the question of whether the rules are pragmatic, helpful, or fair.
- JohnL4 10y agoThere are more homeless people than beds in shelters, for one.
- richmarr 10y agoSuspect parent was asking a rhetorical question, but what data are you looking at? Not sure it's true universally. Shelter (UK homeless charity) broadly agrees with parents claim that privacy & other residents are a significant problem. http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns_/why_we_campaign/tackling_homelessness/tackling_street_homelessness http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns_/why_we_campaign/tac...
- skybrian 10y agoIt seems like this is the real world equivalent of the design that has to go into social software. It's a universal rule of the public Internet that spam and abuse make everything suck. Therefore it's not enough that your design encourages good usage. It also has to discourage bad usage.
- feintruled 10y agoYou see this a lot of airports. One particularly egregious example is EasyJet's 'boarding lounge' (which you are funneled into long before a plane even arrives), which has a few leaning benches but is otherwise standing room only. This isn't for any public good - it is meant to push you into paying for 'speedy boarding', which gets you access to a roped off area with proper seats.
- ekingr 10y agoReminds me of a scandal with Tesco in London when they installed "anti-homeless" spikes in front of their stores. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/12/tesco-spikes-remove-regent-street-homeless-protests https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/12/tesco-spikes...
- ctack 10y agoI would love to see fewer street lights. Especially in village / suburban settings. But the word is that they reduce crime. Are there any studies to this effect?
- icebraining 10y agoSome studies: http://www.popcenter.org/library/crimeprevention/volume_10/03-PeaseLighting.pdf http://www.popcenter.org/library/crimeprevention/volume_10/0... http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2015/07/08/jech-2015-206012.short?g=w_jech_ahead_tab http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2015/07/08/jech-2015-20601...
- verisimilitude 10y agoSorry, I meant to upvote you but got the wrong arrow. Anyway, I once read a nice article about light pollution that made this point: light to reduce crime is a common misconception. Criminals don't like dark places any more than we do, and a lack of light makes their job harder, not easier. It would seem that the primary literature continues to bear this out.
- jessaustin 10y agoYes this is why there is no nighttime lighting on my farm. I know the place well, so I have no trouble walking about and doing whatever I need. Recently a mare and foal were delivered by semi van at the front gate (our hill is too steep for this vehicle) at 1:30 AM. It was no trouble for me to lead these animals the half mile to their pasture, down the hill, across several other pastures and a creek, in the pitch-black darkness of a moonless cloudy night. Someone unfamiliar with the property would have broken several ankles.
- mentatseb 10y agoIt's basically applied actor-network theory from sociology and the delegation of control to objects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93network_theory
- ipsin 10y agoI'm convinced that someone(s) in Santa Monica, CA's urban planning divsion has been practicing unpleasant design ruthlessly. The first pass replaced normal bus bench seating with low blue toadstools. Once they figured out that they're terrible for people with any kind of knee problem or more serious disability, they added a pair of poles to the sides. Useless, uncomfortable seats, but by God, no homeless people (or regular people) can enjo y their use. More recently, at a rail station they added a wavy pattern to the sidewalks[1]. I heard second-hand that the texture causes disorientation and nausea, and then I experienced it myself. Now I'm convinced that it's to keep bicyclists off the sidewalk, because it makes anyone sick to look at it, but bicyclists are slightly faster and usually have to look where they're going more carefully than pedestrians. [1] http://ronslog.typepad.com/ronslog/2016/06/santa-monica-photos.html http://ronslog.typepad.com/ronslog/2016/06/santa-monica-phot... , particularly the sixth photo. Not mine, but the best shots I've seen of it.
- fencepost 10y agoGood lord that sidewalk is horrible when looked at from eye height. Does it give the same impression of lumpy/wavy when you're crossing it rather than walking along it?
- ipsin 10y agoIt's mostly oriented so that you can only walk along it -- that is, it's bounded by the road and a barrier, so that you can only really experience it one way. It is pretty miserable.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Overtonwindow 10y agoGenerally I avoid the homeless. I don't give them money and I frown on their activities. However, they are humans, and they deserve to be treated with respect. It warmed my hearts when the anarchists in London used cement to cover up the spikes at a Tesco. I'm not advocating destruction of property, or the breakage of any laws, but I do think we all need to change our views on the homeless. They're people. Treat them with respect, even if you disagree with their way of life.
- habosa 10y agoI really hate all of the effort taken to prevent people from sleeping (or generally relaxing) on the street in San Francisco. I have on many occasions picked up a sandwich and then walked a mile without finding a good place to sit and eat it. All because we're worried some homeless person might be too comfortable. The problem is not that homeless people want to sleep on benches, the problem is that we've failed so badly at taking care of each other that people have nowhere else to sleep.
- Animats 10y agoThen there's the Columbia, SC final solution to the homeless problem.[1][2] Their concentration camp plan didn't work out, though. [1] http://www.columbiasc.net/depts/city-council/docs/old_downloads/08_13_2013_Agenda_Items/Emergency_Homeless_Response_13_August_2013.pdf http://www.columbiasc.net/depts/city-council/docs/old_downlo... [2] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/28/south-carolina-capital-city-forces-its-homeless-out.html http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/28/south-carolina-ca...
- PepeGomez 10y agoOh fuck off with that bullshit. No jews/niggers/old/disabled/fat people etc. are allowed to comment on this site.
- dang 10y agoThis comment breaks the HN guidelines badly. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't post anything like it again. Instead, please (re)-read the site guidelines and follow them. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12043967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12043967 and marked it off-topic.
- mobiuscog 10y agoThe irony that the second edition of the book is digital only, so can't be used for stoking fires, covering windows, making paper airplanes... etc. Unpleasant design ?
- paul_milovanov 10y agoaka, design.
- fiftyacorn 10y agothe blue toilet isnt bad design - its used to stop people injecting drugs in public toilets
- drewrv 10y agoIt doesn't stop anyone, just pushes them elsewhere. The real solution is safe injection sites.
- mipmap04 10y agoI don't think anything in this article is designed "poorly" and I don't think the author meant to convey that the design was bad - the designs of these objects just have a goal of being unpleasant. If your goal is to design something unpleasant, and you succeed, I would say that is a good design.
- gog 10y agoI think you maybe just skimmed over the article. They didn't state that something was designed "poorly".
- panic 10y agoGordan Savičić and Selena Savić, co-editors of the book Unpleasant Design, are quick to point out that unpleasant designs are not failed designs, but rather successful ones in the sense that they deter certain activities by design.
- coffeedoughnuts 10y agoi would suggest reading the article
- jiiam 10y agoWe have them in the bathrooms of our math department too (on classrooms' floors). Guess math students have heroin problems.
- DominikR 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- scrollaway 10y agoOne of the most important paragraphs: > Most of these goals seem noble, but the overall effect is somewhat demoralizing, and follows a potentially dangerous logic with respect to designing for public spaces. When design solutions address the symptoms of a problem (like sleeping outside in public) rather than the cause of the problem (like the myriad societal shortcomings that lead to homelessness), that problem is simply pushed down the street. Can't agree more. It's so common in France and really depressing. On the linked video (which looks to be shot in Paris, actually), we see dozens of these contraptions right in front of metro ads which cost most than it does to feed and shelter homeless people for several weeks.
- madeofpalk 10y agoBut isn't this just 'separation of concerns'? I'm not trying to say 'not my problem', but when the shopping centre is built, they're not primarily concerned about finding houses for the homeless - they want to make sure there are seats available for those who want to sit there temporarily. Lots of public areas, like parks, will be funded by the private sector as a condition of approval for a big apartment building or something - I don't see anything wrong with them spending a minimal amount of effort to prevent 'antisocial behaviour' as well.
- Mithaldu 10y agoIt's wrong because it means to give up, to close your ears and eyes against the real problem. Anti-social behavior like "homeless sleeping in cavernous shop entries" does not come from nothing. People aren't normally like this. It comes from their environment being anti-social to them by refusing to aid fellow citizens in need. Being social means to actively try and be a society. By actions such as putting up these spikes, these companies are only being anti-social themselves.
- skybrian 10y agoIt seems like you're suggesting that as an alternative, we use collective punishment. City dwellers should be putting up with an unpleasant urban environment until someone fixes the homeless problem. Therefore any stopgap measures should be resisted. It's not clear whether this works. On the one hand it does keep the homeless visible. On the other hand it also punishes people who can't practically participate in local politics (tourists for example). And in general, politically powerful people aren't waiting at bus stops all that much, so this strategy doesn't seem all that well-targetted. It may also be counterproductive in that it makes people less rather than more willing to support measures that help the homeless and instead promote measures that punish them in return. That is, punishment may encourage more punishment in response. But I'm just speculating here. It seems like this is unlikely to be settled without actual evidence.
- timlyo 10y agoI hate those high pitched buzzers for teenagers. I'm in my 20s and can still hear them.
- lorenzhs 10y agoI was in New York recently and the Franklin Av Shuttle subway station seemed to have these devices throughout the station (entry hall, stairs and platform were all covered). Also in my 20s and I could hear them clearly - the frequency was changing between several very annoying ones, all in the extremely high pitched spectrum (17.5-20kHz, from what I read online). By the time the train arrived I was really glad to get out of there, it made my head hurt quite a bit. It was an awful experience. Apparently the MTA decided that royally annoying young customers was less important than preventing loitering kids.
- cowpewter 10y agoI'm 36 and I can still hear them. Thankfully, they aren't very common in my area.
- guard-of-terra 10y agoTo me, "buzzers for teenagers" is an extremelly unsettling slash dehumanizing idea. I thought it's a proof of concept, I can't imagine how anybody will actually install one of these. It's totally like installing a bump in your door frame so any people with disability will have difficulty passing. We're not wanting any limp lamers to destroy our healthy mood inside, do we? One day people who embraced this kind of thing will be old and helpless, and "teenagers" will held all posts. Just sayin'.
- Crespyl 10y ago> unsettling slash dehumanizing As a tangent, it is fascinating to me that you would write out the "slash" instead of using the single character symbol. Watching the evolution of the thing-a/thing-b construct from a shorthand used almost exclusively in online text, to something used in spoken conversation to explicitly convey a mix of several ideas has been really interesting. I wonder if there are examples of this pre-internet, or a similar construct that has now fallen out of style?
- gabemart 10y agoI see two main claims in the article: * "Unpleasant design" is different because it aims to exert social control in public spaces * "Unpleasant design" is different because it is intended to create a hostile atmosphere - it increases unpleasantness rather than pleasantness I don't really agree with either claim. All design of public spaces is intended to exert some form of social control. Creating a manicured park with flower beds, comfortable benches and beautiful splashing fountains is intended to exert social control by encouraging people to congregate and spend time in the park. In fact, any good designer attempts to exert control by encouraging certain behaviour patterns over other behaviour patterns. "Unpleasant design" is not intended to increase unpleasantness. Some groups perceive people sleeping on benches or congregating ("loitering") as unpleasant, just as other groups find preventing people from sleeping on benches or congregating to be unpleasant. I'm not defending the particular examples of design referenced in the article. I'm not saying it's a great idea to make benches you can't lie down on. But I don't agree it makes sense as a distinct category of design. It's just design that tends to favour groups higher in the socio-economic hierarchy at the expense of groups lower in the socio-economic hierarchy. This may be a very bad thing, but I don't think it's a different type of design.
- ozmbie 10y agoI agree that the word "different" isn't the best word. These are a physical equivalent of Dark Patterns (user interfaces designed to trick people).
- hnal943 10y agoDark patterns attempt to trick the intended user. What is the trick being pulled on the intended user here?
- tikhonj 10y agoRight. The article has a point, but trying to extend it into a full category of design—and then calling it "unpleasant design"—feels more than a bit arbitrary. They just grouped together designs with goals they disliked and called them "unpleasant" under the guise of developing a "critical theory". When you define a category, with a name, you're heavily implying that the categorization you use is important and meaningful and natural, and it's not clear that it is here. They're trying to sneak a particular moral point through as commentary on design—which, thinking about it, isn't all that different from the designs they criticize.
- frik 10y agoThere is an old classic book about the topic about NYC from a famous researcher. Everyone should read that book. (I don't recall the details, but I have it in my bookshelf at home)
- frik 10y ago"The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" by William H. Whyte
- peteforde 10y agoThe Social Life of Small Urban Spaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjxXTsHgc8g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjxXTsHgc8g
- minikomi 10y agoAre you thinking of "the life and death of great american cities" ? I'm reading it now.. very interesting book and still relevant.
- dredmorbius 10y agoJane Jacobs, for those unfamiliar with the author. A true gem.
- aaron695 10y ago> Concrete or metal spikes are used to keep people from urinating in dark city corners https://ablersite.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/anti_urination_utrecht_01.jpg https://ablersite.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/anti_urination... http://www.slab-mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Sorbonne.JPG http://www.slab-mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Sorbonne.... http://unpleasant.pravi.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/anti-wewe-02.jpg http://unpleasant.pravi.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/anti-w... ? http://www.slowtrav.com/blog/jgk/DSCN5768ant.jpg http://www.slowtrav.com/blog/jgk/DSCN5768ant.jpg
- chriswarbo 10y agoI didn't realise spikes, etc. were used for this; I would imagine this just "shifts the problem" a few centimetres, requiring spikes to stop people urinating on the spikes. I think the "splash-back" approach to stop urination is a much more interesting topic, compared to unimaginative spikes.
- pmontra 10y agoI always wondered if this is hostile architecture or just plain stupid http://i.imgur.com/FUuFPgK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/FUuFPgK.jpg See how the lady walks on the right? Bicycles stay on the two rails on the left and often pedestrians too. All the space in the middle is nobody's land. It's rounded pebbles in a concrete pavement.
- vog 10y agoThis works also towards animals. For example, on top of the information displays at outdoor stations, there are spikes, as seen on this picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/IMG_6146_Hamburg_Hbf.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/IMG_6146... These prevent birds from sitting on these displays, which keeps the displays clean and prevents passengers waiting below that display from unpleasant surprises.
- rangibaby 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse#Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse#Design Queues at Disneyland etc. follow these principles too, to stop you from getting stressed by a long wait.
- panic 10y agoThis isn't necessarily bad, and there are plenty of innocuous unpleasant designs: doors with locks, fences, car alarms, even those faucets in airport bathrooms you have to keep pushing to keep them from turning off. Sometimes you need to make something less friendly in order to prevent certain unwanted uses. The important thing to remember is that you aren't fooling anyone. It's quite clear what your unpleasant design is designed to prevent, and the design itself serves as a constant reminder of the problem it was designed to solve. Locks remind you of burglary, airport bathroom faucets remind you that people often leave the water running, and spiky windowsills remind you of homelessness almost as much as actual homeless people do. This may not be the kind of feeling you want to build into your city!
- chjohasbrouck 10y ago> This isn't necessarily bad, and there are plenty of innocuous unpleasant designs: doors with locks, fences, car alarms, even those faucets in airport bathrooms you have to keep pushing to keep them from turning off. Sometimes you need to make something less friendly in order to prevent certain unwanted uses. I think the key difference here is that these things prevent burglary, trespassing, grand theft, and thousands of gallons of wasted water. The Camden bench just makes it so you don't have to see a homeless person. There's something distinctly dehumanizing about that, moreso than door locks.
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- TeMPOraL 10y agoThe difference between locks/fences/car alarms and those benches is literally the difference between criminals and homeless people. All those designs are purposeful attempts at deterring a particular social group. The question to ask is when it's right to act this way.
- kgwgk 10y agoDo you think is right to prevent homeless people from sleeping in your car or your home?
- wingerlang 10y ago> The Camden Bench is virtually impossible to sleep on. It is anti-dealer and anti-litter because it features no slots or crevices in which to stash drugs or into which trash could slip. It is anti-theft because the recesses near the ground allow people to store bags behind their legs and away from would be criminals. It is anti-skateboard because the edges on the bench fluctuate in height to make grinding difficult. It is anti-graffiti because it has a special coating to repel paint. It's a bench for sitting on, I don't understand how anyone gave this a second thought. And are they treating the anti-skate/anti-graffiti as negatives? Why would the city not want to protect their property and make keep the tear to a minimum.
- chriswarbo 10y agoThe words are negative ("anti-", "hostile", etc.), and that seems gives the article a slight bias against these things, but overall it seems to be mostly trying to call attention to these things. For example, the concluding remarks: > Whether handed down by the establishment or created in response to official interventions, there is always an aspect of coercion to design. Usability design, for instance, is used to get people to buy things and use their smartphones in certain ways, often without the user even being aware of it. Fundamentally, works of unpleasant design, hostile architecture and street furniture in general are no different. > The reason we need a critical theory of unpleasant design is so we can recognize the coercion that is taking place in our public spaces. We need to know when we are replacing human interaction, nuance and empathy with hard, physical and non-negotiable solutions. > Whether you think a certain form of design is exclusionary but serves a greater good, or believe it is just hostile and offensive, it is important to be aware of the decisions that are being made for you. Designs that are unpleasant to some are put into place to make things more pleasant for others, and that latter category might just include you. They mostly seem to be against the public being coerced unknowingly. For example, many people might think the purpose of segmenting a bench with arm rests is for the seater's convenience/comfort, or that 'leaning benches' are just a way to save on materials cost. Regardless of whether public opinion agrees or disagrees with the main reasons for these trends (e.g. anti-sleeping), we can't know what that opinion is until these reasons are commonly known.
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