home-less

In mid-December 2016, I met a young woman called Nikki who had to flee her home due to an abusive relationship, she was doing everything she could with the support officers to help her out of her situation, however they told her that her needs were not as dire as others so she had to wait another three weeks before they would meet her again. In the mean time she was trying to get money to pay for homeless hostels but mainly spending her nights in the streets. Other homeless men looked on her with the same social standing an “tried it on with” her one even attempting to force his way into her sleeping bag, and when she refused “pissed” on her (Nikki, personal communication, 12th December, 2016). She said that she hadn’t been able to shower since then and apologised for it. She was developing a cold sore an, worryingly, had a rather puffed up hand (similar to when my mother was bitten by our local smoke-grey cat, and her hand swelled up just like a balloon). She was living under bridges and in sheltered archways, having to constantly move for fear of harassment and assault. (See Negative appropriation page)

We met by the canal at the base of Kings Cross gas towers and struck up a conversation as I was admiring the Gas Tower park they had created there and she commented on how “great the area was now it’s been developed”, implying her locality and how, although homeless, she has the same opinions and points of view as a permanent resident. For homelessness perpetuates if no help is given and the true ‘users’ of a space are those who have to live with the tools we leave for them. Of course a project will not be built without those who have the money to fund it, “people who are homeless cannot pay the piper” (T Browne, personal communications. 13 Jan, 2017) which is the unfortunate truth of the matter. Yet we can design for use rather than

St Mungo ' s against it. As designers we are not social workers, but we do design social space. The negative feeling of a space designed to remove people perpetuates the feeling of ostracism, meaning if we design a space which is not for people to dwell we create an area where interaction is discouraged (Holland, C., Clark, A., Katz, J. and Peace, S. 2017). She initiated the conversation, and we ended on a handshake. She left behind the safety of a (western) ‘conventional home’ of dignity and privacy for a “survival circuit [or] constellation of spatial and temporal points”(Bergamaschi, Castrignanò and Rubertis, 2014. Paragraph 10). Nikki’s reference points were places where she could be warm, beg, get cheap food and relieve herself, i.e. “McDonalds and Burger King”. There are levels of our ideas of domestication of space. One view, is leaving a work of art behind to beautify the area, another is having the freedom to protest and march for what a person believes is right; or having the spatial knowledge and reference points to avoid expulsion for as long as possible, and finding the 24 hour food kings cross most sheltered and protected space so as not to die whilst you are asleep.

24 hour food kings cross

It is often said that the ‘thing’ many homeless people lack is the treatment of being in existence. Hundreds of people pass by them without giving them a glance, even if they have seen them. And the mere essence of a smile could make all the difference in the world. It is their presence which shape our thoughts of under-sky space. Their enforced domestication of our public space is both a testament to human resilience as well as a silent alarm to all of our sliding-glance shame. How can we, as designers of space, create a more welcoming world?

In his book, The Right to the City, Don Mitchell references how “the best social research . . . suggests that rather than leading to serious crime, disorder- like crime- is caused by conditions like poverty and a lack of trust between neighbours” (Mitchell, p227) so from this angle we need to start from the established order of things, we need to begin with healing the mistrust of refugees and migrants to ‘indigenous populations’ we need to create common goals and beliefs to unify communities and peoples, and we need to create a sense of communal ownership of spaces.

Take the Superkilen project in Copenhagen, the designers were presented with a fragmented neighbourhood of immigrant communities and given the task of unifying the people. To achieve this, they went through the communities and heard the stories they had to tell, of the reasons why they came to be in Denmark and the memories of the homes they left behind.

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The result? A half-mile long park exhibiting ‘found objects’ of the different cultures dwelling in the neighbourhood, unifying the stories, and peoples together and inviting learning and understanding amongst cultures (Topotek 1, BIG Architects and Superflex, 2016). The designers wanted to create meeting points with cultural landmarks and activities, and so far it’s proving effective (Lucchese,2014).

“It is necessary to bring the reality of the users into the design process, taking into consideration their aspirations and needs. The sensitivity of the designers is very inspiring here as they could capture that emptiness you feel when you are miles away from home, a very relevant issue in a multicultural neighbourhood. Those who have experienced being homesick know how reinvigorating it is to have a haven where you can just relax and feel back home (even if for just a while).”(Lucchese, 2014).

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Figure 7: Superkilen, Effect of Forbidden space being overruled. Source: Google Maps

Who are we designing for must always be the question at the forefront of our minds when we design. We forget about the ‘less shiny’ aspects of life, of homelessness, of reform, of the need to find shelter in the rain and of the conflicting desires people have in a space. The young need somewhere for their imaginations to run wild and play, the old? Need the same thing but they need to rest in between. Places to be inspire and be valued as theirs.

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There are those who pass through a space without seeing it, it is just a direction to them, the focus points being the beginning and end (the Passives). Then there are those who see the journey as the objective, they absorb the history of the place and revel in the stories that it brings (the Flâneurs). And there are those who take action, they want people to know that they were there, they inscribe their signature, they paint their art and they comment upon the worlds stories (the activists) (Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. p11).