Anti-homeless Spikes

All around the UK, hostile design and anti-homeless spikes are installed on benches and other flat surfaces in public spaces as a method of deterring rough sleepers and homeless people. It is callous and cold way of making people at their lowest feel unwelcome in our towns and cities.

Very often the public don’t even notice it. We wanted to raise awareness and make the public see these street designs for what they really are, hostile furniture.

The Disruption

We teamed up with UK artist Stuart Semple and took spaces where anti -homeless spikes existed. We flipped them to be used against themselves and made a very real point that hostile design is shocking and shouldn’t exist.

Posters depicting people in sleeping bags or lying on cardboard have been embedded in real locations where there are surfaces covered in spikes. The spikes skewer the posters, creating a harrowing image that seems likely to draw people’s attention to a prevalent design feature that most don’t notice day to day.