Cory recently blogged a wonderful gallery of architectural fixtures designed to dissuade sitting. Spike-laden, pronged, and tarry, I appreciate their honest design: when you see the hydrant on your left, you know what its designer was trying to say.

It also reminded me of a chapter in Mike Davis' City of Quartz called "Fortress L.A." In it, Davis ruminates on how the built spaces of Los Angeles create a sort of "spatial apartheid," segregating blue and white collar workers, street people and everyone else. For me, the most vivid image from that passage was the bench on the right, printed with the caption "'Bum-Proof' Bus Bench." It always struck me as a great and troubling example of the interaction between design in the service of social policy.

But while both images seem to fall into this category, the bench's design is coy. It's almost evasive. A casual pedestrian wouldn't immediately see that it was redesigned solely to deny a homeless person the comfort of a raised, dry sleeping platform. The hydrant design wears its mandate on its sleeve. I'm not sure what this difference means in general, but to me it's about honesty and design. What do you think?