Hostile design preys on a certain demographic of people and is designed under the guise of “helping the public.” However, these designs ignore the specific people that this design is meant to exclude as part of the public. The first use of hostile design is on the University of Oregon campus outside their new building, Tykeson Hall. They designed an outside plaza space that is connected with the new building with sweeping, curved benches and landscaping. However, these benches have metal dividers inserted into them every few feet. These dividers serve to not allow skating on these benches to eliminate some “undesirable” people hanging out around the new building. The metal dividers also serve to make it uncomfortable for people to lay down on them, which is the most obvious hostile tactic against unhoused people.
Figure 1 (Outside Tykeson Hall)