This bench is in a public space and it is publicly funded. Yet a decision has been made to ensure that its design (slats and spaces) is such that the public are unable to sit comfortably on it for an extended period of time. The aim of such designs is usually promoted to deter ‘anti-social’ behaviour, such as loitering and rough sleeping. Hence, we get the series of terms associated with such forms of design: hostile design, defensive architecture, anti-homeless architecture and so on. It is this terminology, as much as the artefacts, that is interesting. With the implementation of such designs, which are often located on commercial high streets, their intended use rarely deters their intended targets. And, of course such devices have no bearing on (and may even be counter productive for) homelessness as a social issue. More broadly, the design industry appears to have little consensus around a code of ethics (Fridman et al., 2022).