5 min readWhen designing your home, urban planning likely doesn’t come
to mind. You may feel that the scale and grittiness of cities don’t translate to your interiors, but as it turns out, certain urban planning concepts can make their way into homes, in both good and negative ways.
Sometimes, homes are designed and decorated in a way that
may look beautiful but is actually not welcoming or conducive to human connection. In the urban planning world, this is known as “hostile design,” and in cities, this approach intentionally limits how people can use a space.
Trey Farmer, principal, partner, and chief sustainability officer at Forge Craft Architecture + Design, calls out examples like benches that prevent people from lying down, planters designed so people can’t sit on them, or skate stoppers, those little bumps you see on ledges to prevent skateboarding. But as Sidney Aulds, co-founder and principal architect of Contour Architecture Group, points out, in a residential home, hostile design isn’t necessarily intentional. You likely don’t “mean” for your home to feel unwelcoming and uncomfortable.
If your home is guilty of unintentionally embracing hostile
design, there is a fix. It’s called “sympathetic design,” which Farmer says is all about making a home feel accessible, comfortable, and usable by a wider range of people.
Noah Exum, NCIDQ, national equity design lead at HGA,
says sympathetic design encourages us to think about how others’ perspectives, needs, and experiences might differ from our own. “That has impacts beyond property lines, helping us imagine ways to remove barriers and connect with others in all parts of our lives,” they say.
One term tied to sympathetic design is empathy, which Aulds believes is integral to good residential architecture. “The house should work with the people living in it rather than asking them to adapt themselves to the house,” he says. “I believe architecture should improve the quality of people’s lives, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Because a home is not a sculpture—it's an environment for living.”
Ahead, discover the “hostile design” mistakes you might be unknowingly making in your home, along with sympathetic solutions.
Choosing Materials Based Only on Appearance
Instead of only choosing a material based on what it looks like, Farmer emphasizes the importance of durability, what a material is made from, and how it can impact indoor air quality.
Sympathetic design fix: “Homeowners can look for durable, lower-emitting materials and ask more questions about what is going into their home,” Farmer says. “Resources like the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab can also help homeowners and designers better understand material health and make more informed choices.”
Skipping Comfortable Places to Sit
Aulds says that while a room can have plenty of furniture, it still may not provide enough comfortable places to sit. “You might walk into a living room and see a sofa and a couple of chairs, but they're positioned too far apart for conversation. Or there may be beautiful accent chairs that look great but aren't particularly comfortable,” he says.
Sympathetic design fix: Aulds says, “Design seating around human interaction first and aesthetics second. Give people options. Have places where two people can sit and talk privately, places where a larger group can gather, and ideally a comfortable spot where someone can sit alone.”
Providing Only One Seating Style
“Only having one style of seating in a living or dining room implies that everyone should be sitting or behaving the same way,” Exum says. “For people whose bodies don’t fit well in those seats, the physical discomfort becomes a psychological indicator that they aren’t welcome, at least not as they are.”
Sympathetic design fix: Exum advises, “Make sure your furniture feels comfortable and sturdy to people of different sizes, and mix up things like seat heights and arm styles so guests have at least two choices in where to sit.”
Separating People
If you can, try to avoid separating people who are doing
things apart from everyone else, such as in a kitchen where someone preparing dinner faces a wall while everyone else is having a great time in another room, which Aulds calls “socially isolating.”
Sympathetic design fix: “Whenever possible, orient working areas toward the people and spaces they're serving,” Aulds says. “That doesn't necessarily mean creating one completely open floor plan. It can mean placing a kitchen island where someone can cook while still talking with family, or creating visual connections between the kitchen, dining area, and outdoor spaces.”
Treating Daylight, Heat, and Fresh Air as Afterthoughts
Farmer says that although large windows and open rooms can be beautiful, they need to be designed around the climate and orientation of the house.
“Too much unshaded glass can create glare and overheating, while poor ventilation can make an otherwise beautiful room uncomfortable,” he says.
Sympathetic design fix: “Good shading, thoughtful daylighting, operable windows where they make sense, and a well-designed ventilation and filtration system allow a home to look good and feel good at the same time,” Farmer observes.
Overly Lit Exteriors
Hostile design can even make its way to your exterior,
namely, through your exterior lighting, something that Exum says can impact others.
They say, “We have no control over our neighbors’ lighting, but fixtures that are too bright or cold can make pedestrians feel like they’re under surveillance, in addition to disrupting sleep patterns and increasing light pollution.”
Sympathetic design fix: Exum says that instead of high-mounted lights, “use warm-colored path lights or sconces (of 3,000k or less) that only illuminate what you need to see when you see it.” You can also utilize what’s called “dark sky principles,” which can benefit wildlife along with pedestrians.
Hiding Reality
“Concealed trash, unlabeled soap dispensers, and keeping
things like a plunger or spare TP hidden away has a minimalist appeal, but it can force your guests to ask awkward questions,” Exum says.
Sympathetic design fix: “Find products that look nice enough to leave out or make anything your guests might need easy to find in an obvious location,” Exum says.
Designing for Aesthetic Value Only
You may design a room that’s meant to be flawlessly
photographed, and nothing else. Overlooking functionality in this instance can be a form of hostile design.
“A home can photograph beautifully and still be uncomfortable to actually live in,” Farmer says. “Sometimes we design for the photograph instead of the person. A huge, dramatic room might look incredible, but furniture that is too spread out can make it awkward for four people to sit down and have a conversation.”
Sympathetic design fix: “Design for real life,” Aulds recommends. “Ask where the kids will drop their backpacks, where someone will put down a cup of coffee, where guests will naturally gather, where you'll sit on a Sunday morning, and where you'll go when you want to be alone.”
