Shocking art project spotlights ‘insidious’ anti-homeless spikes and hostile architecture

Campaigners have covered spikes used to prevent people from rough sleeping in London with posters of people experiencing homelessness in a shocking campaign to uncover “insidious” hostile architecture.

Renowned artist Stuart Semple and creative agency TBWA\MCR teamed up to create bespoke posters to fit anti-homeless spikes built into doorways and paved areas.

The campaigners then punctured the posters with the spikes in a bid to show the “inhumanity” in hostile designs.

Hostile architecture is the practice of using urban planning to exclude people from public spaces. It can be hidden and hard to spot and can also take many forms, including benches, planters or spikes which block rough sleepers lying down or rocky pavements to block skateboarders.

Semple said: “Hostile design is so insidious that it’s often easy to miss the true intention of it. Raising awareness so that people can spot what’s happening in the public realm for me has always been the first step in shifting the culture.

“At the end of the day, design shouldn’t be perverted to harm the vulnerable and city planners and designers should be using their talents to include, nurture and support communities.”

Semple’s HostileDesign.org campaign has been running for a number of years, inviting people to download stickers from his website to highlight ‘design crimes’.

The artist – best known for his blackest black paint and feud with Anish Kapoor – went viral in 2018 when he highlighted bars placed on a bench in Bournemouth to discourage rough sleepers bedding down.

That post inspired rapper Professor Green and designer Max Murdo to detach the bars before the local council removed them.

Semple told the Big Issue at the time: “You have to get used to seeing where you live from a new perspective. When people can see it they are outraged but they need to see that it is all around us and isn’t always obvious.”

Semple’s latest eye-catching campaign has seen him step up the shock factor in a bid to prevent more hostile architecture on London’s streets.

Gary Fawcett, executive creative director at TBWA\MCR, said: “Life is hard enough for people forced to live on the streets. We were shocked to discover this type of design exists and in some cases is commissioned by our own councils. We felt compelled to create something that would help to raise awareness and educate people on the harsh reality of living rough.”

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