This was a fascinating experience. I'd been aware of the concept of hostile architecture, and have pointed it out to friends as I see it in the city I live in, but I found the point of "these monuments don't even serve as the benches they're supposed to be" to get me to look at a bunch of them in a new light.
Also, the attention to detail in the museum setting is phenomenal - from open/close times on the opposite side of the door, to a maintenance door, a lot of small things to really help feel like you're in an actual museum!
Hi, I wanted to visit this museum because I was very interested in the subject, but I ironically had a bunch of accessibility issues:
No native Linux build. I don't know how Unreal Engine builds work but I'm pretty sure it's possible to build for another OS. I managed to play it through Steam's Proton after a bit of configuration, but this is probably what caused some of the other issues.
Keyboard layout somehow locked to physical WASD, it makes it unbearable to use classic FPS controls on any non-QWERTY keyboard (AZERTY in my case), changing my keyboard layout to Engish (US) somehow didn't solve the issue. Again, I don't know how UE works, but I know that this is very easily solvable in Godot by switching "physical" keycode to "virtual" keycode, I can only assume (and hope) that UE has a similar feature. The mouse controls were welcome to be able to explore the museum, but I would have preferred being able to use mouse + keyboard.
Very bad performance, this is probably due to not having a native Linux build, but it was way worse than anything I've experienced on many games I played through Proton. On default settings, I had a weird visual glitch that looked like the game was displaying a buffer that wasn't done being rendered to. Playing in Windowed mode with lowest resolution managed to reach 20fps with no visual glitches.
Changing from Full-screen to Windowed broke the game, giving me a white window with shading at the edges. Thankfully restarting fixed it, I am glad that the museum saved my settings. This is very likely to be caused by playing through Proton because I've experienced many other resizing issues on other games, but getting a white screen with no UI is a first.
Thanks a lot for collecting all these designs and data and recreating them for this museum, it was really informative.
If you are open to the idea, I'd like work on a French translation to reach more people, because I'd like to share it with people I know, but I know that a lot of (older) French people don't understand English.
Also the website version is utterly broken on Firefox, with images overlapping the text everywhere.
Apologies you had so many issues, and I appreciate your perseverance and interest. The goal of the website was to offer a more inclusive option, as I knew the visual target of the game would alienate some, so I'm disappointed you had trouble with that as well. I actually built most of the site using Firefox, so not sure what's going on there, I will look into it. If there was ever going to be additional language support it'd be for the website, as it's easier to update and more accessible in general. No plans for that or a linux port now though.
Beautiful design of the Museum and Benches, and good overview of the anti-social structure, very coherent art-style. They even completely took away benches at some stops where i live, so no one can rest. NO social spending, that's terrrible, we do have enough to bail out banks and billionaires with our taxes though.
I don't really like the bars, i know it's for the aesthetic, but a third option to get rid of them would be cool.
Firstly, it was so immersive - everything was modeled beautifully. The gallery text itself makes very poignant points not only about exclusionary design but also the role of the gallery and institutions in providing spaces of contemplation as well as the politics of art such as minimalism being a marker of class and wealth. In its extremely realistic rendition of a "white cube" space, this work makes you think about the grandeur and authoritative voice as well as the contradictions and ironies of such minimal, white and clean spaces.
Finally, I did not realise until the end the aspect ratio was meant to mimic a bench! In fact I think it makes a very poignant irony that mirrors the discussion on exclusionary design: that the claustrophic aspect ratio which hinders on accessibility and visibility was chosen for "art" and sculptural reasons; it is an example of form over function itself.
This was an amazing museum exhibition! Both the objects and the space itself were so carefully designed to limit and constrict. Best representation of hostile architecture in media I've seen (other than the hostile architecture itself of course). Thank you very much for making this game
This was wonderful and definitely necessary. I was aware of how anti-homeless certain park benches are, but the bus bench exhibit made me think.
As a recreation of a modern art museum exhibit, I think this is impeccable. There’s some stuff that I wouldn’t have expected in a game like unused socket plugs.
I do think the game should’ve taken out the motion blur and added a crosshair. The game is short enough that I didn’t get too motion sick, but it did get annoying to play.
Still, an unbelievable work. Thanks for making it.
i don't have windows, so i had to do the website version, but thank you for your work! these benches are the most aggravating things imaginable, esp when they start failing to serve even a basic purpose as benches just sheerly out of a desire to harm the homeless. i appreciate the work you put in and how neat the website was.
Hi! I played this awhile back and really enjoyed it but didn't quite understand it. Coming back to it, reading other comments really puts it into perspective for me, I have heard of this before but once as a child and had forgotten about it. I uploaded the game on my new gaming youtube channel where I post games I adore and cannot go without playing or I think about them time to time and this is one of those games. You portrayed the message so well, the game is also very beautiful and feels serene even though there is a much deeper meaning behind it. Thank you so much for creating this! You don't have to check my video out, I just really wanted to share this with who ever might click on it! (:
Great game, I am a history teacher in Argentina, and I often reccomend this to my students. Here in Buenos Aires, there are these kinds of benches. They deceive the eyes and seem quite comfortable, but they are made of concrete and are truly uncomfortable to sit or to lay (they can even be found in Tecnopolis, a museum dedicated to tecnology). The first experience with this bences is usually one of surprise, rage and then laughter at the "trolling" of the ones that made the bench, but putting it in the context of exclusionary design redefines my perspective on these monstrosities.
One of my students, that wants to study urbanistic design, played the game and told me "me sentí miserable, una mierda de persona. Me sentí mal por la humanidad. ¿Por qué se hace esto?" (I felt misserable, a crappy person. I felt bad for the humanity. Why do we do this?)
When playing, I've noticed following the numerical order is designed to be confusing and annoying, forcing you to backtrack multiple times and scan each room just to proceed to the next numbered monument. My best assumption to why is to give you the feeling like whoever designed it didn't care much for your ease of access, kinda like the benches don't for people who need them for more than sitting.
Sadly, out of the three people I've showed this to so far, none of them followed the numerical order for long, so only I picked up on that detail. Two ignored it entirely, and one ditched it after monument 7.
I really like that little part of the experience, but I'm sad that possibly very few people will actually walk through it that way.
This is such a genius framework to explore how exclusionary architecture lacks obvious function in the way an exhibited work of art would. V sharp & poignant, I love it.
This is a beautiful little experience! Thank you sincerely for making it. I love all the little touches, like the limited view and the odd numbering of the benches.
I wonder if you have any art for the game, as something like a poster? I ask because you can add non-steam games to your steam library (which I have done with this) and then assign them custom cover art so they look just like any other game in your library. If not, I'll probably whip something up and post it on steamgriddb.com.
By the way, in case you're curious, the game was mentioned in a recent video by a popular youtuber named Jacob Geller (where I heard about you from!), here.
Oh also, because I'm a pedant I can't resist letting you know, but there's one typo, on the Blame sign. It reads: "Nothing about who designed it, nor the landscapers that planned out its placement or which architecture team they where directed by". That "where" at the end should be "were".
I've been mad about this trend in benches for a while, these horrible things cluttering the last livable social spaces we have left in the world, turning a spot that brings peace and brings people together into another point of separation and misery.
I've been kicking around the idea of a digital museum for my own point of interest, seeing this really makes me see how it could be done. I'm inspired for sure.
Absolutely excellent!! I really appreciate this both as an exhibit and as a piece of media. Love the details put into the museum space (the little "no sitting/sleeping" sign was a lovely touch) and the exhibit itself was really something else. Bravo!!!
I'd love it in the form of a VRchat room, walking through it with a friend, talking through our thoughts about it. Though, having this as a VR space of any kind would be amazing, as all I could think of when playing this is that I wish I felt the scale to properly take in how uncomfortable each one would really be, how slanted or thin they actually are in person.
Admittedly, I wouldn't quite get that if this was indeed to be a VRchat room, since the perception of size would be heavily dependent on the avatar used.
I mucked about with having mannequins you could spawn on top of the benches to get a sense of scale. but the ragdoll stuff was too goofy. I had fun tho!
Yeah, without having it in VR or IRL the only thing you can really do that won't compromise the feel too much is to have buttons to show a mannequin in a static pose both sitting and laying on it when applicable.
This is really amazing and well done, incredible detail on the benches and just a really well laid out museum walkthrough and theme. Loved it. It's amazing to think this only covers the benches and how many more types of exclusionary design there are.
Sorry about that! I'm working on a website version to make the info as accesible as possible, though I recognise that's not quite as tempting! Thanks for your time.
I remember when I first saw a bench with such a disconnector on the seats and thought how his doesn't make sense and mades sitting uncomfortable if you are not super slim all while not really looking that much better. Only years later I realized what these designs main purpose were. Cruelty is the point.
I keep coming back to the bench at the very start of the museum. It somehow seems archaic by comparison in this space and yet it still feels the most inviting. Perhaps this bench welcomes us properly because it looks comfortable enough to sit or lay on, or perhaps it is precisely because it is not roped off or dangling out of reach like the other benches. Regardless, subtleties like this bench and the words written on the walls "do not touch", "No sitting or sleeping" in an exhibition of objects which were originally designed for those very purposes, made for a truly insightful experience.
This was a phenomenal exploration of hostile design! It's amazing how far designers have gone to try and mask their intent by working some sense of "aesthetic" into their benches.
With how uncomfortable they are to even SIT on, it's reached a point where you have to wonder why they'd bother installing them in the first place. Is it just a formality now? Are the benches just there to create the vague sensation of a public space without actually contributing to it? The most mind boggling design has got to be those spherical benches. I can't even believe those are meant to be sat/leaned on.
I appreciate the small details around the museum that mesh in with the theme, like the sealed fire door that doesn't have a proper knob, the museum-wide warnings not to touch the walls, and most notably the game's viewport being set in an aspect ratio that crops the viewer's perspective into a small gap to peer through.
I also admire the work you put in to painstakingly re-create all of those benches. The final presentation is super crisp, and I am genuinely amazed.
One of the most common (and least visible) attempts at exclusionary design is not to just not build any public seating at all. It's quite common in financial districts, the only people they want in thoe spaces are either walking to work or getting lunch.
And yea, I'd say the most useless of them are mostly there to offer the illusion of a civil, public space. They are perches for the consumer class to drink a coffee on and nothing more. Though, I don't think those spherical ones are even intended for perching. It's just a slightly more visually appealing way of stopping people leaning up against the wall than... with another wall??
I've seen target use the spherical ones out front of their stores; depending on their positioning, they can double as bollards to protect pedestrians from oncoming traffic. Which is interesting because the entire point would be negated if people DID sit on them.
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This was a fascinating experience. I'd been aware of the concept of hostile architecture, and have pointed it out to friends as I see it in the city I live in, but I found the point of "these monuments don't even serve as the benches they're supposed to be" to get me to look at a bunch of them in a new light.
Also, the attention to detail in the museum setting is phenomenal - from open/close times on the opposite side of the door, to a maintenance door, a lot of small things to really help feel like you're in an actual museum!
Thank you, glad you got something out of it.
Hi, I wanted to visit this museum because I was very interested in the subject, but I ironically had a bunch of accessibility issues:
Thanks a lot for collecting all these designs and data and recreating them for this museum, it was really informative.
If you are open to the idea, I'd like work on a French translation to reach more people, because I'd like to share it with people I know, but I know that a lot of (older) French people don't understand English.
Also the website version is utterly broken on Firefox, with images overlapping the text everywhere.
Hello,
Apologies you had so many issues, and I appreciate your perseverance and interest. The goal of the website was to offer a more inclusive option, as I knew the visual target of the game would alienate some, so I'm disappointed you had trouble with that as well. I actually built most of the site using Firefox, so not sure what's going on there, I will look into it. If there was ever going to be additional language support it'd be for the website, as it's easier to update and more accessible in general. No plans for that or a linux port now though.
Thanks again.
Beautiful design of the Museum and Benches, and good overview of the anti-social structure, very coherent art-style. They even completely took away benches at some stops where i live, so no one can rest. NO social spending, that's terrrible, we do have enough to bail out banks and billionaires with our taxes though.
I don't really like the bars, i know it's for the aesthetic, but a third option to get rid of them would be cool.
This was truly a work of art.
Firstly, it was so immersive - everything was modeled beautifully. The gallery text itself makes very poignant points not only about exclusionary design but also the role of the gallery and institutions in providing spaces of contemplation as well as the politics of art such as minimalism being a marker of class and wealth. In its extremely realistic rendition of a "white cube" space, this work makes you think about the grandeur and authoritative voice as well as the contradictions and ironies of such minimal, white and clean spaces.
Finally, I did not realise until the end the aspect ratio was meant to mimic a bench! In fact I think it makes a very poignant irony that mirrors the discussion on exclusionary design: that the claustrophic aspect ratio which hinders on accessibility and visibility was chosen for "art" and sculptural reasons; it is an example of form over function itself.
This was an amazing museum exhibition! Both the objects and the space itself were so carefully designed to limit and constrict. Best representation of hostile architecture in media I've seen (other than the hostile architecture itself of course). Thank you very much for making this game
Thanks for checking it out!
This was wonderful and definitely necessary. I was aware of how anti-homeless certain park benches are, but the bus bench exhibit made me think.
As a recreation of a modern art museum exhibit, I think this is impeccable. There’s some stuff that I wouldn’t have expected in a game like unused socket plugs.
I do think the game should’ve taken out the motion blur and added a crosshair. The game is short enough that I didn’t get too motion sick, but it did get annoying to play.
Still, an unbelievable work. Thanks for making it.
A beautiful collection of a few of the subtle and loathsome injuries we as a society inflict on the least of our ranks.
i don't have windows, so i had to do the website version, but thank you for your work! these benches are the most aggravating things imaginable, esp when they start failing to serve even a basic purpose as benches just sheerly out of a desire to harm the homeless. i appreciate the work you put in and how neat the website was.
good luck with the new channel!
thank you for the video i had a hard time with the website and dont have a good place to run the program myself
Great game, I am a history teacher in Argentina, and I often reccomend this to my students. Here in Buenos Aires, there are these kinds of benches. They deceive the eyes and seem quite comfortable, but they are made of concrete and are truly uncomfortable to sit or to lay (they can even be found in Tecnopolis, a museum dedicated to tecnology). The first experience with this bences is usually one of surprise, rage and then laughter at the "trolling" of the ones that made the bench, but putting it in the context of exclusionary design redefines my perspective on these monstrosities.
One of my students, that wants to study urbanistic design, played the game and told me "me sentí miserable, una mierda de persona. Me sentí mal por la humanidad. ¿Por qué se hace esto?" (I felt misserable, a crappy person. I felt bad for the humanity. Why do we do this?)
wow, thank you for sharing with your students. that's such a compliment.
When playing, I've noticed following the numerical order is designed to be confusing and annoying, forcing you to backtrack multiple times and scan each room just to proceed to the next numbered monument. My best assumption to why is to give you the feeling like whoever designed it didn't care much for your ease of access, kinda like the benches don't for people who need them for more than sitting.
Sadly, out of the three people I've showed this to so far, none of them followed the numerical order for long, so only I picked up on that detail. Two ignored it entirely, and one ditched it after monument 7.
I really like that little part of the experience, but I'm sad that possibly very few people will actually walk through it that way.
good, but sad. It's crazy what we do to people. Interestingly these chairs seem to fit so well in the sharp & hostile interior of a gallery.
nice !
Absolutely stunning. I am sat, crying, for the ways we as humans love to make other humans suffer. Thank you.
This is such a genius framework to explore how exclusionary architecture lacks obvious function in the way an exhibited work of art would. V sharp & poignant, I love it.
This is a beautiful little experience! Thank you sincerely for making it. I love all the little touches, like the limited view and the odd numbering of the benches.
I wonder if you have any art for the game, as something like a poster? I ask because you can add non-steam games to your steam library (which I have done with this) and then assign them custom cover art so they look just like any other game in your library. If not, I'll probably whip something up and post it on steamgriddb.com.
By the way, in case you're curious, the game was mentioned in a recent video by a popular youtuber named Jacob Geller (where I heard about you from!), here.
Oh also, because I'm a pedant I can't resist letting you know, but there's one typo, on the Blame sign. It reads: "Nothing about who designed it, nor the landscapers that planned out its placement or which architecture team they where directed by". That "where" at the end should be "were".
Sorry, obnoxious comment, I know.
Just scrapped a few together for you. Hope one fits your Steam library needs!
okokok one more lol
Thank you so much! This is my favorite one so far, it looks right at home
I've been mad about this trend in benches for a while, these horrible things cluttering the last livable social spaces we have left in the world, turning a spot that brings peace and brings people together into another point of separation and misery.
I've been kicking around the idea of a digital museum for my own point of interest, seeing this really makes me see how it could be done. I'm inspired for sure.
heck yea do it.
Absolutely excellent!! I really appreciate this both as an exhibit and as a piece of media. Love the details put into the museum space (the little "no sitting/sleeping" sign was a lovely touch) and the exhibit itself was really something else. Bravo!!!
Stunning- excited for the eventual website version
Done!
https://monuments-to-guilt.louisthings.com/
Breathtaking. I understand why ultrawide support might not be considered, but it would be appreciated.
i'll put it on the list of 'maybe one days'.
Thanks for taking the time to check it out
Any chance for a VR release?
That'd be neat! I'm working on getting it running on cheaper hardware at the min tho.
I'd love it in the form of a VRchat room, walking through it with a friend, talking through our thoughts about it. Though, having this as a VR space of any kind would be amazing, as all I could think of when playing this is that I wish I felt the scale to properly take in how uncomfortable each one would really be, how slanted or thin they actually are in person.
Admittedly, I wouldn't quite get that if this was indeed to be a VRchat room, since the perception of size would be heavily dependent on the avatar used.
I mucked about with having mannequins you could spawn on top of the benches to get a sense of scale. but the ragdoll stuff was too goofy. I had fun tho!
Yeah, without having it in VR or IRL the only thing you can really do that won't compromise the feel too much is to have buttons to show a mannequin in a static pose both sitting and laying on it when applicable.
i would so absolutely love this in VR!
This is really amazing and well done, incredible detail on the benches and just a really well laid out museum walkthrough and theme. Loved it. It's amazing to think this only covers the benches and how many more types of exclusionary design there are.
Thanks for the kind words and for spending the time.
Sorry about that! I'm working on a website version to make the info as accesible as possible, though I recognise that's not quite as tempting! Thanks for your time.
I remember when I first saw a bench with such a disconnector on the seats and thought how his doesn't make sense and mades sitting uncomfortable if you are not super slim all while not really looking that much better. Only years later I realized what these designs main purpose were. Cruelty is the point.
Great virtual museum.
Yea, It's wild how easy it is to just accept these things as they are, or shrug them off as just the product of incompetent designers.
Thanks for checking it out.
I keep coming back to the bench at the very start of the museum. It somehow seems archaic by comparison in this space and yet it still feels the most inviting. Perhaps this bench welcomes us properly because it looks comfortable enough to sit or lay on, or perhaps it is precisely because it is not roped off or dangling out of reach like the other benches. Regardless, subtleties like this bench and the words written on the walls "do not touch", "No sitting or sleeping" in an exhibition of objects which were originally designed for those very purposes, made for a truly insightful experience.
This was a phenomenal exploration of hostile design! It's amazing how far designers have gone to try and mask their intent by working some sense of "aesthetic" into their benches.
With how uncomfortable they are to even SIT on, it's reached a point where you have to wonder why they'd bother installing them in the first place. Is it just a formality now? Are the benches just there to create the vague sensation of a public space without actually contributing to it? The most mind boggling design has got to be those spherical benches. I can't even believe those are meant to be sat/leaned on.
I appreciate the small details around the museum that mesh in with the theme, like the sealed fire door that doesn't have a proper knob, the museum-wide warnings not to touch the walls, and most notably the game's viewport being set in an aspect ratio that crops the viewer's perspective into a small gap to peer through.
I also admire the work you put in to painstakingly re-create all of those benches. The final presentation is super crisp, and I am genuinely amazed.
Thank you, what a lovely read!
One of the most common (and least visible) attempts at exclusionary design is not to just not build any public seating at all. It's quite common in financial districts, the only people they want in thoe spaces are either walking to work or getting lunch.
And yea, I'd say the most useless of them are mostly there to offer the illusion of a civil, public space. They are perches for the consumer class to drink a coffee on and nothing more. Though, I don't think those spherical ones are even intended for perching. It's just a slightly more visually appealing way of stopping people leaning up against the wall than... with another wall??
I've seen target use the spherical ones out front of their stores; depending on their positioning, they can double as bollards to protect pedestrians from oncoming traffic. Which is interesting because the entire point would be negated if people DID sit on them.
heh, yea. The fact that they are interchangeably used as seats or bollards implies a general negligence in design thinking.
Awesome showcase and great information!
appreciate it!
Really interesting trip around a museum. Lots to think on and uncomfortable too, like the benches included.
Thanks for making look again at this.
cheers mate!