LK0189: Landscape Theory in Architectural and Planning Practice !30/5-20014 DEFENSIVE LANDSCAPE DESIGN - How an element of the built environment can function as mechanism for exclusion by Natalie Coquand 1 LK0189: Landscape Theory in Architectural and Planning Practice !30/5-20014 Abstract This paper aims to uncover how political ideals can be communicated through built form and how this can be understood and read in terms of landscapes. This research has been done by using the sloping benches in the underground stations of the light rail system the City Tunnel in Malmö as an example. It is no secret that the benches are sloping to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them, but what are the consequences of this for our society? This is often a byproduct of a society where the city is being marketed in order to attract money and tourism to compete at a global scale. A branded city demands a well designed city centre, and homeless people are, as a consequence of this, being excluded from the public space by various kind of defensive landscape designs, such as the sloping benches. In this paper, I use these benches as an example to describe how seemingly simple elements of the built environment can function as mechanism for exclusion. I also focus on displaying how the benches can become a mediator of social practices of power and thereby help producing a culture that aims to exclude homeless people from public spaces. The paper begins with an introduction to the benches and how they got a lot of attention in media when they were first produced. I then explain, by using Emberto Eco’s article, how the bench can function as a mediator of social practices of power. To supplement this, I then use Don Mitchell’s work in order to attempt to expose the benches in a larger context and show how the benches can contribute to producing a culture where homeless people are excluded from the public space and how this is a consequence of our society. Using Eco, I show that the more an object functions according to our cultural code, the more one can hide political messages without anyone noticing. Therefore, it can be very hard to read landscape and to understand what ideals are really behind a design. Mitchell shows that even though the political ideals are embedded in our everyday life, it is not impossible to read the landscape. He also shows how complex it is to read and understand it. My conclusion is that one needs to understand and take into consideration both Mitchell and Eco’s aspects if one want to fully understand how we relate to our environment. In other words, one has to take into consideration the historical, cultural and social context to be able to see the hidden messages that the objects that make up our built environment contain. 2 LK0189: Landscape Theory in Architectural and Planning Practice !30/5-20014 1. Introduction Throughout history our built environment has been used to portray images of power, status and political will. The relation between humans and the built environment is complicated and multidimensional. Elements in the built environment, are thus designed and created by humans which then, in turn, project powerful symbolic ideals over us both physically and psychologically. In 2010 the City Tunnel, a light rail transit system, was introduced in Malmö. The benches used in the stations have a peculiar design aspect in them: they slope so that homeless people aren’t able to sleep on them (Bornudd, 2008). This paper aims to uncover how political ideas can be communicated through built forms by using the sloping benches in the train stations of Malmö as an example. Catarina Thörn argues that the kind design that actively exclude homeless people from the public space, such as the benches in the City Tunnel is a consequence of a kind of trademark-thinking. Cities actively work with branding as a way to attract tourists and capital flow. According to Thörn, cities are being seen as products to be sold on the global market and in order to compete cities need to be seen and to stick out. The focus is thus naturally turned towards the city centre: how can the centre be developed in to the ’creative, vibrant and exciting environment that all politicians and merchants dream about’? Thörn argues that the city centre is then being reduced to a stage to be glamourized and that the citizens are playing the roles of living creative consumers. In our modern western society, cities are being treated like companies and the urban development is based on a branding philosophy where political decisions concerning the city are weighed solely on the basis of whether a development project is positive for the city’s trademark or not (Thörn, 2008). This development can be even be seen on a more detailed scale: a branded city demands a designed centre. The public space is often being referred to as a ’living room’ - a comparison that implies that the room should be directed by well-being. It goes without saying that most people would agree upon the fact that you wouldn’t want a homeless person sleeping in your living room. Thörn argues that in this kind of a society, homeless people are considered a threat to the trademark, thus marketability of a city. In North America it has been a trend for quite sometime that homeless people are actively being pushed away from the city centre by different forms of what Mitchell refers to as defensive landscape designs. Building a bench that you can’t sleep on is only one example of this new trend, and it’s growing popularity is getting more and more creative in it’s exclusionary measures (Mitchell, 2008 p. 45). The obvious downfall to this type of thinking is that social problems remain, but it is generally comfortably enough for the middle-class consumer as long as the problem is moved out of sight (Thörn, 2008). The sloping benches of the City Tunnel in Malmö is a proof that this trend kinds of defensive landscape design has in fact began its spread and reached Sweden. As landscape architects we generally work in a small scales and within details of the built environment, for example benches and other features of a landscape. Regardless of their size and seaming insignificance one must wonder if these elements can also be implemented with political ideas? Are we corroborating politic ideals in our design? How can this be understood? The purpose of this paper is to examine how political ideas can be communicated through built form, using the benches in the City Tunnel as an example, The following questions have guided my research are: - How can one, seemingly innocent, element of the built environment function as a mechanism for 3 LK0189: Landscape Theory in Architectural and Planning Practice !30/5-20014 exclusion? - How it is possible for an object of the built environment to communicate ideological ideals and thereby become a mediator of social practices of power? - What kind of society are the benches a consequence of and what do they imply? - How can one read and understand the political messages embedded in objects of the built environment? 2. The Story of the Benches On the 12 of december 2010 the new City Tunnel opened in Malmö. The six kilometer long train tunnel under the city is one of Sweden's largest infrastructural investments and connects Malmö and Copenhagen via the Öresund bridge. The tunnel has two underground stations: Malmö central and the Triangel station. The stations have a similar design. Among other things, they are provided with the same benches. These benches have a peculiarity: they slope (see fig 1). The reason for this is to not attract homeless people or others that would want to use the benches for lying on (Bornudd, 2008). Fig 1. The benches. Picture: Fredrik Edin (29-11-13 source: http://arbetaren.se/artiklar/den- luffarsakra-banken/) The slope of the benches did not go unnoticed and before too long citizens started voicing their concerns regarding the function, or lack thereof, of the benches. Newspapers like Metro and Sydsvenskan received a steady stream of comments and concerns regarding the benches as the issue was discussed quite intensely in the media. One citizen even reported the benches to the swedish equality ombudsman claiming that disabled people, children and older people could not use the benches at all (Anjou, 2011). Even the owner of the station, the city of Malmö, has a policy document pertaining to furniture public spaces which states that all furniture should be accessible for everyone, including the disabled and children. In addition to this, a disability association complained to the city of Malmö resulting in a slight adjustment of the degree of slope. The project leader from the Swedish Transport Organization (Trafikverket) and the one responsible for the benches, Wolfgand Liepack, explained in an interview that they decided to make the benches slope less so that disabled people 4 LK0189: Landscape Theory in Architectural and Planning Practice !30/5-20014 would be able to use them. In this same interview he admitted that the intentions of the sloping benches were initially to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them, a point that was slightly weakened by him saying that ’because of cameras and guards they would not be able to anyways’. (Bornudd, 2008). This begs the question that even though Liepack knew that cameras and guards would be in place to prevent undesirables from sleeping on the benches, why did he slope them? 3.