Paul’s Walk, below Millennium Bridge, City of London

A Hostile Architecture Tour Around London — Part 3

7 min readJan 2, 2024

In my previous two instalments of this series I first rather randomly wandered around London to stumble over some examples of hostile architecture. In the second part I dug a bit deeper into the history and theory of defensive design. In this third and last part I will first try to give my impressions some order, and then pick up on a question that has bothered me from the beginning about how much deliberate planning goes into designing hostile architectural elements.

Office entrance on Charterhouse Lane, Farringdon (the spikes serve no other purpose than being anti-homeless/anti-loitering design, even accepting a potential safety hazard for visitors to the building)

Attempts at categorization

In my first article I grouped my findings along technical aspects, like anti-homeless spikes and benches. This time I want to find a more abstract way to categorize different types of defensive design I encountered:

Elements clearly designed with hostile/defensive intent (e.g. spikes, roughed surface features, anti-skating features)
Designs that are ambiguous, having certain hostile design elements, but also offer some deniability for the designer (“plausible deniability”)
Design elements which have no specific defensive elements, but communicating that certain activities (e.g. “loitering” or feeling to comfortable) are not intended.
“Retrofitted” elements added to otherwise normal designs (e.g. some features added later to benches or walls)

Obviously this list is neither covering complete nor do objects always fall clearly into one category alone. The first category, the spikes to prevent people (i.e. homeless people) from sleeping and loitering are so limited to specific areas that they become almost pointless (considering the overall context). Mainly found in the City of London (with Limehouse being an outlier) the cost of installing them appears to be prohibitive unless some truly important place is in need of defending itself.

Limehouse Basin Marina (the designers left no doubt about the hostility here)

Limehouse Basin Marina (possibly the architects switched to concrete spikes because covering the whole marina in stainless steel spikes was breaking their budget, or it is an experiment which one works better?)

Plausible Deniability

Benches on the Strand, in front of Somerset House

This is the most fascinating category and the one where I have received the most pushback: I have seen some design elements being defended as “mobility aid” or “privacy separator” (based on he theory that dividers encourage strangers to use a bench together). It is interesting however that those arguments are not found in product descriptions. Some, like design company Factory Furniture (see next section) openly acknowledge the double purpose of certain design elements. Those element may serve some function, but that does not exclude their purpose as being hostile or defensive at the same time.

In addition, the “mobility aid” argument appears strange considering the large amount of installations in public spaces (often curved or uncomfortably shaped, made from cold materials like concrete or stone) with no armrests or backrests at all, which are nevertheless described as “inclusive” (e.g. see Factory Furniture’s Bromley project).

Transparency of intentions

Since I started this series I wondered how open manufacturers, designers and urban planners actually are about their intentions when it comes to defensive design elements.

This is not an easy thing to pin down: However, after much searching I have found at least some examples where local authority, designers and law enforcement worked openly hand in hand and made no secret of their aims.

Identifying the designers of urban furniture (e.g. benches) is also often not straight forward either: No bench is being sold as “anti-homeless bench” or even as “anti-social behaviour urban bench” as such, and urban furniture is normally not labelled.

“Factory Furniture”, an Oxfordshire based designer of urban furniture (and designer of the infamous Camden benches, see Part I of this series) like benches, tables etc is likely the most open and transparent designer of defensive furniture and public spaces. They maintain various projects pages which documents the ideas behind the designs. Their project page for Camden, London gives a unique insight into the design process:

The brief was aimed to address anti-social and criminal behaviour that typically plague city centre benches [..] Working with various departments various departments including Transport Planning, Highways Engineers, DDA officers and the Met police’s Crime Prevention Design Advisor¹

It also mentions “the lack of slots and crevices deters those wishing to stash drugs” to justify the solid bench designs, apparently a feature of traditional benches I have not been aware of.

Public space project for Bromley, London (“being as inclusive as possible whilst resisting criminal and anti-social behaviour” and a “lack of slots and crevices deters those wishing to stash drugs”) The arrangement has been changed and broken up since installation, intentionally or by vandalism.

Also, their project page for Bromley confirms my assumption that many of the more extravagantly designed public spaces (with no obvious hostile elements) are designed with anti-social behaviour in mind:

was designed with contemporary street seating needs in mind; for example, being as inclusive as possible whilst resisting criminal and anti-social behaviour²

Their Besançon, France project page also confirms that extra armrests serve a clear double purpose, without making the hostile intention too obvious:

The standard Skop bench design was modified to include special armrests that also acted as skate deterrents.³

Factory Furniture’s designs for public spaces are mostly falling into the third category mentioned above, with Camden and Bromley being prime examples of public spaces designed to shape certain behaviours (for more examples the Part 2 of this series).

Others are not that frank when it comes to design intentions: Externalworks offers a bench with “extra armrests”⁴ and mmcite’s “Park bench with armrest”⁵ make no mention of any extra purpose, despite the dubious functionality of their very low profile “armrests”, likely assuming that those purchasing it will be aware of its additional purpose.

Canary Wharf Station, Docklands (dividers can hardly be justified as “armrests”)

A rare well-documented process

I believe I have to applaud Factory Furniture for being so transparent and revealing the double function of certain design elements. Interactions between authorities and designers are rarely well-documented. Therefore I will risk quick detour to Canada:

In her thesis “An uncomfortable City” Jessica Annan⁶ describes the objectives of the “9 Block Program”: To “improve safety” (perceived and real) and support the reduction of social disorder in the area. A document by the Calgary Police Service⁷ describes the perceived value of CPTED (“Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design”, see Part 2 of this series for the historical background) as follows:

CPTED enhances safety by influencing the physical design of our environment and encouraging positive social interaction. CPTED recognizes that our environment directly affects our behaviour, whether or not we are aware of it, because we constantly respond to what is around us. These responses help us to interact safely in our communities.. (from a brochure by the Calgary Police, Annan⁶, page 52)

I find the acknowledgement of using subliminal messaging by design the most fascinating aspect of this document.

Westward Parade, Isle of Dogs (the concrete bench design itself was apparently not hostile enough and required dividers. It is not obvious if those have been retrofitted (likely) or were part of the original design.)

Peter’s Hill, City of London (“The very result architects are hoping to achieve through these designs — people avoiding these spaces because of bodily discomfort — is how we recognize such designs as distortions of beauty.”[8])

Anti urinating device in Greenwich. Those installations, also in form of “urine deflectors” exit in London since the 19th century and the interesting history behind them would warrant an article on its own.

Low wall in Clapham Old Town (This might have been a type of fencing originally, but now seemed to serve a different purpose, hence falling into the “retrofitted” category)

With this I will likely end this series but I have the intention to stay on the case of urban design. When I started the series more than 18 months ago I knew next to nothing about the topic. I still believe that hostile architecture needs to be considered in a broader context of urban planning and social control, especially how it attempts to shape behaviour with design.

I hope it has been informative to some, it certainly gave me many starting points for further research.

¹Factory Furniture : Great Queen St Camden | Archived 2024–01–01

²Factory Furniture: Bromley | Archived 2024–01–01

³Factory Furniture : Le Tramway Besancon | Archived 2024–01–01

⁴Externalworks : Tee Bench With 2 Arm Rests | Archived 2024–01–01

⁵mmcite Park bench with armrest | Archived: 2024–01–01 Archived Image

⁶An uncomfortable city: a community-based investigation of hostile architecture, Jessica Annan, 2021

⁷Calgary Police Service : Crime prevention through environmental design

⁸Schneider, A: Archetypal Perspective Anti-Homeless Architecture