Building to exclude: from ‘poor doors’ to anti-homeless spikes

A modest door caused controversy this week. A planned New York housing development came under fire after Gawker reported planning permission had been granted for the tower to have two separate entrances for residents: one for residents of the luxury flats that comprise most of the buildings, and another entrance, tucked from view in an alleyway, for tenants in a smaller number of affordable homes. As part of the planning agreement, the developers had to include some flats for people on lower incomes. In one of the world’s most expensive cities, you’d hope the proposal wouldn’t be too outlandish, but the developers have ensured the rich and less affluent tenants will never meet inside the building.

London too, has similar developments. The One Commercial Road development, which famously stalled after the 2008 financial crisis but has now been acquired and will soon become luxury flats, also has some affordable flats on the lower levels: with separate entrances, Channel 4 report. The imposing Strata Tower, with a dipped roof that contains two wind turbines giving it the appearance of an owl from a distance, has three lifts – one for the market rate flats on the lower floors, and two for the luxury flats above. So millionaires with views across the capital will never need make small chat in close quarters with their neighbours from the lower floors.

News of the New York apartment’s ‘poor door’ as it’s been dubbed by several newspapers, was met with anger by many people, and meant it was widely reported. It’s not hard to see why – the separate entrances are a physical and uncomfortable manifestation of the inequality that has plagued cities for decades. Similarly, the backlash around a set of ‘anti-homeless spikes’ outside a block of luxury flats in Southwark shows how tangible reminders of the fact as a society we treat people differently provokes massive discomfort. The parallels between anti-homeless spikes and the thin metal spikes built to deter pigeons don’t seem too distant: installing them implies you see the destitute and homeless as a pest, to be deterred.

But ‘defensive architecture’ has seen a gradual growth across the globe. Most bus stops in the United Kingdom are now thin, and built at a 45 degree angle, to prevent people sleeping on them. New benches in city centres and parks often have arm rests built into the middle to stop skateboarders hoping on, and make rough sleeping impossible. To the untrained eye, these look like rather odd choices of design, rather than actively hostile elements that aim to deter certain behaviours.

Pushing undesirables members of society; the young, the poor, the homeless, out of municipal spaces and into the margins, reminds us of what already happens economically. It’s easier to believe this is down to an unfortunate side effect of economics as we recover from the financial crisis – people will always be poor, but what can you do about it? Hostile architecture says the opposite – this is a tactic, rather than a consequence. The fact that spaces have been designed with a particular public in mind rarely plays well with the general public when the reasoning behind the design is revealed.

Design in public space can bring people together rather than drive them away too –public water fountains, and open sport facilities are good examples. But less value can be derived from communality over exclusivity, as developers of gated communities discovered long ago.

But defensive architecture might well end up being one of the defining historical artefacts of this period. The Victoria and Albert Museum recently acquired a set of the metal studs by the same manufacturer who supplied the spikes for the Southwark flat and added them to their contemporary architecture, design, and digital department. Future generations may wonder why public space was built with such little empathy.