99% Invisible - 219- Unpleasant Design

Episode Date: July 6, 2016

Benches in parks, train stations, bus shelters and other public places are meant to offer seating, but only for a limited duration. Many elements of such seats are subtly or overtly restrictive. Arm rests, for instance, indeed provide spaces to rest arms, but they … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Around the corner from our office in beautiful downtown Oakland, California is DeLauer's new stand. It has been there since 1907. For the people who live in work downtown, it is central to our existence. Everyone goes there to buy drinks, lottery tickets, little packs of fruit flavored sigareloves, and occasionally, even a newspaper. 163. But about eight months ago, it became clear that even though Delaur's wants a bunch of people inside the store buying things, they don't want a bunch of people outside their store hanging out on

the sidewalk. Here's how you can tell. Delaur's started playing really loud classical music through a speaker outside, and although I still see a fair number of people hanging out in front of the place, the owner says it's not nearly as many as before. Well, big change. It was mess, the hangar outside, and you know, just, they playing dice on the street outside the door, and it was crazy, but now it helps us a lot.

Even the customers telling us they see the change on the street here. I'm the owner of Delar's New System. My name is Facilima. When you have classical music, people who are young and cool don't really hang out there, so that's a way to deter teenagers. That is Selena Savage. And I'm co-author of the research project about unpleasant design.

Playing classical music on loudspeakers is an example of what Selena calls unpleasant design. Unpleasant design is something that works well at deterring certain behaviors and certain uses from particularly public spaces. Along with her partner Gordon the Savichich, Selena collects and catalogs on pleasant designs. Unpleasant design was here since we started designing

public space or since we started designing cities. Unpleasant designs are meant to exert a kind of social control in public by targeting people who spend a lot of time in public spaces, especially the young and the homeless. And the designs often end up pushing these so-called undesirable people out of one space and into another. Music is only one method for deterrent teens from public space.

In 2009, the Nottinghamshire House of the States in England installed pink lighting to keep kids from congregating. Pink lights, which would emphasize the skin, like blemishes and on teenagers, which should result in teenagers not hanging out there. That's one of my favorite examples. Mine too, although there's not a lot of evidence

that proves how effective it is. Pink lighting that plays on teenagers in securities is funny and kind of devious if a little far-fetched. Another more substantiated example of targeting and trying to eliminate undesirable behavior with light is the presence of blue lighting in public restrooms. I saw this in UK train stations quite a bit last time I was there. Blue light of a particular color makes the veins slightly less visible. You can't see your veins through your skin, so it's hard to find a target if you're an intravenous drug user.

Then it became a very popular solution for all kind of publicly accessible toilets and even sometimes in buses. When your veins are not visible to you, you're obviously not going to be able to take any herring. According to Selina, lights are one of the original forms of public social control, for example. There was a bridge in a small town in Bosnia, specifically in the Cosba of Vyshegrad Bosnia in the early 1900s, where he Austrian government, who kind of annexed the country at that time, decided to implement street lighting and that was very unpleasant to the locals and the locals would

destroy the light every night and the government would reinstall it every morning. And so the idea that light is something unpleasant for free expression in public space is something that we completely forgot. We've since become so habituated to public lighting that our primary experience with streetlights is that they deter criminal activity and make us feel safe. Unless you're someone who laments the lack of stars in the night sky or lives in an apartment with a window right next to a streaming-linked bright bulb, you might never view streetlights as unpleasant at all.

Which is one of the reasons why the unpleasant design project wants to point it out, so that it gets recognized as being part of an overall design scheme that can take on a much uglier manifestation. Well, these studs may only be a few centimeters tall, but they've caused a big debate. This is from a BBC news story from 2014. The reporter Nick Beek is pointing to a set of angry-looking spikes that were installed in the concrete floor of a small alcove by the entrance to an apartment building. The spikes are clearly meant to stop people from sitting or lying there. Is this a legitimate way to prevent rough sleeping and possible anti-social behavior,

or are they a symbol of a heartless approach to homelessness? I hate you more than I know the answer. It's the second one. That spiked a huge debate, and even the mayor of London reacted and said that they should be removed and that we should not address homeless people in this way. The grocery chain Tesco also added spikes to areas outside the entrance to one of its stores in central London in 2014.

They were removed after days of public protest. Generally the debate was about the way we treat homelessness and is that something that we just want to remove from a particular space or is it something that we should somehow structurally address. Spikes to stop people from sitting or lying down evoked a wide variety of reactions from the public. The first time I saw someone lying here homeless couple actually, I didn't like it because I didn't like having to walk by them.

That's trying to be very selfish. So when I saw those stats, I thought, good idea. So a lot of people are bothered by the presence of homeless people, but some are also alarmed by just how aggressive the spikes are. It's almost, looks harmful. You know, if you lie on those, you're going to get spiked. And so it sends that message, which I think is wrong. It's worth saying that these spikes are not just in England.

We have them in the US too. Outside of our office is a window ledge where you naturally want to sit and sure enough, there are these black metal door-naub looking things that keep anyone from resting there. And one thing that makes these spikes in similar features, especially frustrating, is that they're just there. They're not moving. There's no arguing with them. You know, if you have a policeman who prohibits people from sleeping in a park, I think there is still some possible negotiation.

And I think that's good. That's what society is about. The ongoing negotiation and ongoing change. But when we start using things that are immutable and unchangeable, like metal spikes, there is nothing that is going to change until they rust. I think that's the most important criteria for calling something unpleasant a design. It is something that you cannot negotiate with. We have all tried and probably failed to negotiate with one of the most common and aggravating forms of unpleasant design, public seating. Whether it's in a park or a bus stop or an airport, there are countless ways designers have made it so you cannot get comfortable.

And most especially cannot lie down. A classic is the bench with armrests in between, which of course let you rest your arm on the armrest, but at the same time they restrict any other kind of use, then sitting up right. The only way this bench can be used is by three people sitting next to each other and not looking at each other, which is not the only thing you can do on a bench, especially it's not the only normal and legal thing you can do on a bench. Some of the things that limiting the way something can be used is problematic.

By attacking or addressing one particular problem, you actually generate many more problems and reduce complexity of possible behaviors in public space. It's not just dividers and armrests. In the unpleasant design book, they also point out benches that are mounted so high that your feet can't touch the ground, and therefore they're uncomfortable after a short period of time. And they document an increased prevalence of leaning supports at bus stops that you can rest against while standing, but they do not accommodate sitting or sleeping.

But the object that Selina considers the masterpiece of unpleasant design is the Camden Bench. Basically, it is a design solution to 22, I think, anti-social behavior problems. The only thing it does not deter is sitting. The Camden Bench, so name because it was commissioned by Camden London Broe, is a strange, angular, sculpted, solid lump of concrete with rounded edges and slopes in unexpected places. A critic on medium name Frank Swain called it the perfect anti-object. Anti-sleeping because the shape makes it uncomfortable

to sleep on. Anti-drug dealing because there are no slots or crevices in which the high drugs. Anti-thep because the recesses near the ground allow people to store bags behind their legs and away from would be criminals. Anti-scapeboard because the edges on the bench fluctuate in height making grinding difficult. Antiliter because there are no surfaces or crevices or litter can accrue. Antigrophidi because it has a special coating to repel paint.

And all those goals are pretty noble. Except for sleeping and skateboarding, I don't really want the other activities happening in public spaces I go to either. But selling this of it finds this litany of anti-measures, demoralizing. It discourages 22 things, it encourages two sitting and sitting together. When we expect people to do bad things to the bench before we think of anything good that people might do to the bench, I think that's a very sad approach to public space. It's also a contagious approach to public space. There's a chapter in the

unpleasant design book that's devoted to all the unpleasant designs used to thwart pigeons and cities, anti-pigeons bikes and nets are everywhere. And even if you're like Salina and aware of these measures and skeptical of our war on pigeons, you might not have a choice in whether or not to use them. A week after we have published the book, we had a confirmation of this. We didn't even notice, but on the balcony doors, we actually had antipygdened spikes. And then, due to somebody hanging out on the balcony, who was, I don't know, a bit clumsy and they destroyed these spikes on one side and we didn't even notice that. Suddenly the balcony was filled with pigeon shit.

Pigeons might not be overwhelming if the population is spread throughout a city, but the ubiquity of pigeon spikes concentrate pigeons in the few places where there are no spikes. Sona argues that's when the problem is created. And that should not be the way to solve any kind of interest conflicts over a space, but yes, we immediately fix our spikes. There is always an aspect of coercion to design. Design is used to get you to buy things, to use your iPhone in a certain way, sometimes without you even being aware of it. And these pieces of hostile and unpleasant architecture are no different.

Design is something that is supposed to transmit a certain use of this object, otherwise it would have not been designed. However, I think it is very problematic when we start excluding people by design. 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're replacing human interaction and nuance and empathy with hard, physical, non-negotiable solutions.

And this is what we wanted to achieve with this book, to start a debate. There will always be people who believe this is a good way and people who think it's terrible. And we are somehow not extreme in our opinion. We're really the observers. And now you're an observer too. Whether you think a certain form of design is exclusionary,

but serves a greater good, or just hostile and offensive. It's important to be aware of the decisions that are being made for you, because most likely, unpleasant design is put there to make things more pleasant for someone just like you. 99% of visible is Sam Green span to Laney Hall, Kirk-Cold Stead, Katie Mingle, Avery Truffleman, Sharif, Yusef, and me Roman Mars. A bunch of the music this week came from our pal Melodium, Your Life, Will Improve,

Measurably, when you buy and incorporate Melodium into your daily routine. It'll be like being inside a 99% Invisible episode all the time. Find Melodium on Bandcamp and on a bandin building records. It'll be like being inside a 99% invisible episode all the time. Find Melodium on Bandcamp and on a band and building records. We are a project of 91.7K ALW San Francisco and produced are the offices of ArcSign, an architecture and interiors firm in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. You can find this show and like the show on Facebook. You can follow me on Twitter at RomanMars and on Instagram at the RomanMars and the rest of the 99PI crew are all on Twitter and Instagram as well to search around.

But the best way to explore the 99% invisible activity that shapes the design of our world is to click around the hundreds and hundreds of cool stories on 99pi.org. Radio tapio. From PRX.