Home­less­ness should nev­er be tol­er­at­ed in any soci­ety and if we start design­ing in to accom­mo­date home­less then we have total­ly failed as a soci­ety. Close prox­im­i­ty to home­less­ness unfor­tu­nate­ly makes us uncom­fort­able so per­haps it is good that we feel that and recog­nise home­less­ness as a prob­lem rather than design to accom­mo­date it.

Inter­view with Fac­to­ry Fur­ni­ture Design Team | un·pleas·ant de·sign·

You would think design­ers who cre­ate street fur­ni­ture that pre­vents peo­ple from doing cer­tain things, like sleep on them or skate on them, are unsym­pa­thet­ic bas­tards. But judg­ing by this inter­view that is not nec­es­sar­i­ly always the case.

And any­way, I believe we do need con­straints in our pub­lic spaces because not all of us (or maybe even none of us) are capa­ble of liv­ing well togeth­er in an absolute­ly free envi­ron­ment (as if such a thing would exist in the first place).

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Kars Alfrink

Designer turned design researcher. Postdoc at TU Delft. Exploring contestable AI.