1. ArchDaily
  2. Hostile Architecture

Hostile Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

Utopian Control: Company Towns

Utopian Control: Company Towns - Featured Image
Power Houses - Fordlândia. Image © Dan Dubowitz

The built environment we inhabit can be hostile, both on an individual architectural scale and in a wider urban context. Homeless people, for instance, are dissuaded from resting on public benches by the menacing presence of spikes and other forms of exclusionary design. From a global lens, we see the impact that borders have amidst anti-immigration hostility, imposingly exemplified by the Melilla border fence on the Morocco-Spain border. This “hostility” can be found in a large number of settlements around the world, settlements that have been formed as a result of organic migration or settlements predicated on control – like company towns.

Utopian Control: Company Towns - Image 1 of 4Utopian Control: Company Towns - Image 2 of 4Utopian Control: Company Towns - Image 3 of 4Utopian Control: Company Towns - Image 4 of 4Utopian Control: Company Towns - More Images+ 7

Architecture and Homelessness: What Approaches Have We Seen?

In the last global survey undertaken by the United Nations in 2005, there were an estimated 100 million people who were homeless around the world and 1.6 billion who lived without adequate housing. This number has escalated in recent years; unaffordable housing has become a global norm, making it increasingly difficult for the disadvantaged to seek out permanent, or even temporary shelter.

As housing becomes a means of accumulating wealth rather than fulfilling its fundamental goal of shelter, well-intentioned architects have attempted to solve the homelessness crisis through creative ideas and innovative design. But is architecture really the solution?