HDHP.

Humane Design for Homeless Populations: Speculative Design (2023)

Critical thinkers deal in the human constructs of the present. For this, their interrogations are not always intuitive or easily didactic. The masses, after all, operate in a pool of knowledge informed by the constructs of the present. A critical designer’s job is to make an intervention into the fabric of those constructs. What many might dismissed as ‘sad fact’ or ‘the way it is’ are not above criticism nor intervention, and in reality, most worthy of pursuit.

The global west is a postcolonial and capitalism-driven society and is at the heart of modern critical inquiry. We are after all, interrogating the present. Theorist Achille Mbembe summarizes the understanding critical theory has of modern western society, as rooted first in colonial occupation driven by capitalism, asserting control over a physical geographical area—of writing on the ground a new set of social and spatial relations. …ultimately, tantamount to the production of boundaries and hierarchies, zones and enclaves; the subversion of existing
property arrangements; the classification of people according to different categories; resource extraction; and, finally, the manufacturing of a large reservoir of cultural imaginaries,” (Mbembe, Necropolotics, p. 174). The stratification of class, wealth disparity, civil law, the built environment, and of course its outcasts are biproducts of its mechanics. The systemic inequities we see around us are only such because they were made systemic. Colonialism and Capitalism are not inevitable realities. Our present economic system has delegated roles, classes, and
conventions that ought to be questioned.

I engage Angela Davis’s critique of the Prison Industrial Complex in Feminism and
Abolition: Theories and Practices for the Twenty-First Century, as a parallel through which I understand my own interrogation. Like Horkheimer and Mbembe, she encourages critique of the present, advising suspicion against the prison system, “because as more youth are rendered disposable, as more youth become a part of surplus populations that can only be managed through imprisonment,” (Davis, Feminism and Abolition, p. 95) there is such little attention paid to addressing it roots in poor educational funding, racial motivation, and monetary gain. ‘Surplus
Populations’ are to be understood in the exact way Mbembe describes social stratifications, the surplus here being the fringe – groups that, for whatever reason, do not fit into a western capitalist structure. The struggle of Transgender prisoners against violence and persecution, is the foci she uses to “…struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as ‘normal.’ Prisons are constituted as ‘normal,’” (Davis. Feminism and Abolition, p. 99) and necessary to maintain order. Her cry for abolition is a critical call for reorganization of understanding. I ask for the
same systemic reevaluation of homeless populations, more specifically a reevaluation of the built environmental attitude toward the most peripheral ‘class’ in existence. Davis interrogates an entire prison system, and I, a prison of sorts, confining its inhabitants to struggle for survival, for necessities like warmth and bed. Using Horkheimer’s foundational understanding of Critical Theory, Mbembe’s framework for modern societal understanding, and Davis’s parallel critique
of the prison industry, I have developed two Speculative Design proposals for Humane Design for Homeless Populations.

It’s Monday. On my way to the TTC I see the same man on the short journey. Either in the partitioned walkway around the Highrise construction sight, outside our local café, or around the station. We talk sometimes – I’ll buy him coffee, we might smoke a cigarette, or exchange that nod of recognition when you don’t know quite what to say. He’s quiet and his eyes are sad, and I think about him a lot. On the metro, another man is sprawled onto three seats, dozing and spitting up bile, his belongings sliding along the floor with every movement of track. That night – a cold one by my southerner’s standards – traipsing back from my latest class, I see a bundle that is a woman huddled onto a steam vent breathing scant warm air into a smothering, windchilled night. Her fingers are cracked and bleeding, poking out of her blue fingerless gloves, and she looks at me, squinting. I look back, and am again, reduced to my awkward nod, unable to think of something to say. Effectively invisible. We like to pretend they are, and it’s easy to do so with a home, a car, a bed, class, and the cool Gore-Tex shoes I just bought. And still, these faces, these people, because that’s what they are – people – dance in the background of my
resting mind. Critical thought deals in the concerns of most men, even if they, themselves are not fully aware. It’s this notion of Horkheimer’s that has turned my sympathetic gaze to a critical one as well.

But where do I make such a stand? How do I use this newfound critical eye? How do I bridge theory and practice? What makes design effective critique?
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby shed light on just that in Speculative Everything, which I in turn, have used to inform my understanding of Speculative design. “This form of design thrives on imagination and aims to open up new perspectives on what are sometimes called wicked problems, to create space for discussion about alternative ways of being, and to inspire and encourage people’s imaginations to flow freely. Design speculation can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality,” (Dunne & Raby, Speculative Everything, p. 2) and isn’t this exactly the type of redefinition critical theoretical practice calls for in its confrontation with society’s “categories of class, exploitation, surplus value, profit, pauperization, and breakdown [as] elements in a conceptual whole, and the meaning of this whole is to be sought not in the preservation of contemporary society but its transformation into the right kind of society,” (Horkheimer, Critical Theory, p. 218)? It is. Design in this context is a means of critical theoretical speculation and purposed with exposing ‘wicked problems’ in society – subversive, barriers, keeping certain populations, and us, by proxy, from realizing that brighter tomorrow.

Who would guess you could encounter such controversy in a bench, but you can. In fact, it often functions as a common tool of aggressive Anti-Homeless architectural practice. Thus, the bench becomes a sight for a wicked problem, in the same way, but perhaps on a far smaller scale than the institution that is prison, confronted by Angela Davis. Those partitions that divide benches into individual seats are an insidious method of control. Maybe this sounds like a dramatic accusation for something so mundane, but don’t confuse subtlety for harmlessness. Like prisons, partitioned benches are accepted by the public as normal because ‘that’s just the way they are.’ But it isn’t. Benches (the ones without partitions) are also beds for those that desperately need them. My response is straightforward – to design a plastic polymer inflatable cot over such partitions, effectively canceling their design function and rendering a potential bed once more. The inflatable is brightly colored and branded with a bolded invitation “MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE” making its intention unequivocally clear. But this is an interrogation as much as it is a solution. The invitation and the color expose the wicked problem in the same stroke as they solve it. It’s difficult to ignore something so boldly in your face. Such an interjection will hopefully instill debate around the larger problem that partitioned benches represent, prompting reorganizations of understanding surrounding the phenomenon and its wider context. The second of these critical design concepts, we shall call it the ‘Vent Station’ responds, not to a wicked problem, nor deliberate spatial aggression, but to a lack of accommodations and an opportunity to reimagine steam vents in cities. Utilizing color and text (Come in, it’s Warm) in much the same fashion as the bench inflatable, this shelter is grounded in practicality as well as drawing acute attention to unacceptable circumstances. Trapping the free, warm air and sheltering its users, the vent station redefines an untapped resource. Warmth should not be a struggle; it should be a given and I encourage you to start thinking of it as such. It is my hope that these designs start conversation and remind us of a reality shared by those our current system has forgotten, swept, as if by a dustpan, into the peripheries of our collective consciousness.

Bibliography (Chicago)
Davis, Angela Y., Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth Richie. Abolition, feminism, now.
London, UK: Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2022.
Horkheimer, Max, Matthew J. O’Connell, and Max Horkheimer. Critical theory selected essays.
New York: Continuum, 2002.
Dunne, Anthony & Raby, Fiona. Speculative everything: Design, fiction, and Social Dreaming.
S.l.: MIT Press, 2013.
Mbembe, Achille. Necropolitics. Theory in Forms. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.