Featured A(nti)social Design: Toward a Natural History of Hostile Design View Digital Media

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Johann Sagan  

The term hostile design has been used for decades to describe any kind of design, environmental, spatial, object-oriented, visual, or otherwise, that works counter to the needs of a select group of users, or discourages a particular kind of use. It has origins in spatial logics of militarization, was expressed through the late 20th century in public housing design, and has reached a heightened phase within the continuing crises of late capitalism. What are the historical precedents for hostile design, how has it been mobilized in the recent past, and what might its future directions be? This paper critically examines the origins of the term, its contemporary use, examples of the practice, and how it is interrelated with the process of crime prevention through environmental design. Key to understanding hostile design is engaging with both the phenomenological and ontological aspects of experiencing hostile design. Two contradictory modes of thought underpin the practice, first, that the constructed environment can determine people’s activity, and that people will engage with space on their own terms. Hostile design in both architecture and design in general represent a reorientation of design’s values away from improving users lives and experiences and toward exclusivity, danger, and even violence. The increasing the language of the securitization of public space and the logic of exclusion has created a parallel track of values leads to an erosion of the value of public space and democracy.