Archinect - News

China exits Venice Biennale over Alison Killing's Xinjiang detention camp investigation

2023-05-26T15:36:00-04:00

Opening week for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale wasn't short of excitement, reflection, criticism, and social commentary from the architecture community and the general public. With that said, another piece of controversial news was recently reported by the Italian news and analysis website Decode39 on the Chinese Embassy's decision to exit one of the largest international design and culture exhibitions.

According to Decode39, China withdrew from the event due to an installation titled Investigating Xinjiang’s Network of Detention Camps. Created by architect and urban designer Alison Killing of Killing Architects, the project aimed to explore and investigate the "network of detention camps built by the Chinese government in Xinjiang for the mass detention of Muslims."

Previously on Archinect: Architect Alison Killing has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her Chinese internment camp investigations

In 2021, Killing was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in the International Reporting cat...

Adaptive reuse project transforms former Spanish prison into ethereal community center

2022-07-11T16:18:00-04:00

Adaptive reuse continues to be a powerful tool used to save, preserve, and reform older buildings. In Tarragona, Spain, Josep Ferrando Architecture collaborated with Gallego Arquitectura to transform the former Reus prison into the El Roser Social Centre.

In November 2021, Archinect reported the debate circulating in the U.S. around prison reuse. "The movement to design spaces that are actively working to undo some of the social harms caused by mass incarceration is still fairly nascent [...]." This newly-completed project in Tarragona follows a similar sentiment.

The architects explain that the building's rehabilitation and intervention establish "a dialectic between the new more ethereal, light, tectonic elements, and the composition and stereotomic mineral materials of the heavier existing structure."

"The rehabilitation of the building listed as a Cultural Asset of Local Interest and included in the Inventory of Architectural Heritage of Catalonia." Image © Adrià Goula.

The f...

The Italian state is converting a notorious 18th-century prison into a new cultural center in Tuscany

2022-02-02T13:04:00-05:00

The Italian state is spending €70 million ($86 million) to rehabilitate structural remains at Santo Stefano and neighboring coastal sites. At the former, the government is building an open-air museum that will illustrate the site’s dark past, along with gardens and conference rooms that will be used for seminars and events focused on cultural and political themes.

The cultural center will be located inside the site of a former 18th-century prison originally constructed under the reign of King Ferdinand IV in a now aging village called Santo Stefano. The project is being overseen by the state’s cultural minister Dario Franceschini and mirrors efforts in America and Georgia to convert sites with less-than-humanistic original purposes into centers of art and culture that make education about the uses (and abuses) of the sites a part of their public program. The Romanesque panopticon was built to allow for constant monitoring of its inmates known for housing anti-fascists who were exiled there during the Mussolini era.

Another government official told The Art Newspaper that part of the new cultural center will include a "School of High Thoughts, that welcomes all the best training experiences on human rights, the dignity of the person, and justice.” The project is being named after progressive former European Parliament president David Sassoli, ...

Architecture firm HDR is reportedly surveilling the activists who oppose their controversial projects

2021-08-18T17:02:00-04:00

According to documents obtained through a public records request and provided to Motherboard, a subsidiary of Vice, architecture and design firm HDR Inc. has been working with the government to monitor the social media of activist groups opposed to plans calling for the construction of jails and highways.

Through HDR’s STRATA team, a division that “leverages large data sets to visually display social and political risk nationwide”, it’s been revealed that the company has surveilled both public and private Facebook groups run by activists opposed to its projects, including those against a proposed $2 billion highway that would cut through the sacred Moahdak Do’ag mountain in Arizona.

Motherboard notes that the company also generated an “influencer” report, which is an analysis of public sentiment on social media platforms. It includes a geospatial analysis that places communities into categories such as “ethnic enclaves”, “barrios urbanos”, “scholars and patriots”, and “American dre...

Architect Alison Killing has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her Chinese internment camp investigations

2021-06-29T15:14:00-04:00

This year’s Pulitzer Prize committee has named an architect a winner in its International Reporting category, marking the first time someone in the field has won the prestigious journalism award in an area outside of criticism.

Alison Killing has been awarded the prestigious prize for an ongoing project using satellite imagery to track internment camps in China’s Xinjiang region. The sites are said to be harboring up to a million Muslim detainees made up of Uyghur and other minority groups that have been subject to brutal government repression for decades. Killing has been featured in Archinect before for a related project exploring a dialogue between death and architecture.

Related on Archinect: The architecture of death and dying

Killing was cited alongside BuzzFeed staffers Megha Rajagopalan and Christo Buschek to orchestrate a hunt for physical evidence of the camps using a Google Earth-like Chinese search engine called Baidu. Using the search engine, Killing’s team was able to...

Freezing prisons: intentional design or unfortunate oversight?

2019-12-27T18:21:00-05:00

In a recent Vox report, writer Roxanna Asagarian delves into the troubling phenomenon of incarcerated individuals struggling to stay warm in their cells as temperatures drop throughout the winter season. Reaction from the public over the issue seems to be split with regards to how this inmate comfort should be handled.

Considering that prisons are often designed with the intention to deprive personal comfort in any sense, the issue of individuals being deprived of warmth isn’t unexpected.

Asagarian reports, "Because the US system of prisons and jails is so vast — including 50 state prison systems, the federal prison system, and nearly 3,000 jurisdictions that include cities, counties, and Indian reservations — and because there are no federally mandated laws on temperature control, American prisoners are exposed to a wide range of conditions. Even at the state and local levels, there are few laws around this, leaving incarcerated people at the mercy of the courts to implement prot...

The Architecture Lobby and ADPSR take a stand against Justice Department's zero-tolerance policy, pressuring the AIA to do the same

2018-06-20T20:33:00-04:00

The Architecture Lobby and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility have issued a joint statement condemning the Justice Department's widely criticized zero-tolerance immigration enforcement policy that has led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents as families seek asylum at the border.

"It is immoral and inhumane to separate children from their parents, and to use family separation to deter people seeking refuge or asylum. The United States must uphold international and U.S. laws protecting people fleeing violence and persecution," the statement reads.

The two organizations, which work to advance architecture by advocating for social justice reform within the field, are calling on architects, designers, planners and allied professionals to boycott any design work relating to these policies. This includes, as the statement says, walls, checkpoints, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices, detention facilities, processing centers, and ...

Learning from Rikers Island: the future of carceral infrastructure in New York City

2017-12-08T13:36:00-05:00

Mayor de Blasio’s recent pledge to close the Rikers Island jail complex within ten years was met with celebration by many — and skepticism by others. After 85 years in the public imagination, it has become hard to believe that the East River behemoth could ever really be slain. But the reality of a post-Rikers future is coming into focus [...]. Rikers is toxic, and its era is done. A change is on the wind, it seems, and the island’s aura of inevitability is finally dispersing.

In their Urban Omnibus essay, "A Jail to End All Jails," authors Jarrod Shanahan and Jack Norton take a closer look at the history and a potential future of one of the nation's most notorious prisons and the greater jail infrastructure of a city where the average daily incarcerated population was at 9,400 in 2017.

"Following the recommendation of the Lippman Commission in calling for a system of local jails to replace the central complex, de Blasio has released a plan for Rikers’ closure and sought support from consultants and City Council members in siting new jails or expanding existing borough facilities to accommodate more prisoners. The logic goes that jails in the boroughs will be closer to courts, helping cases move through the system more efficiently, and closer to the support of family and social services, helping prisoners stay out of the system once released."

Justice in Design: redesigning NY's most notorious prison

2017-07-14T19:00:00-04:00

Today, the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform—a multi-disciplinary group of experts convened by City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito—released Justice In Design, a report that envisions an alternative to a single, centralized jail. It details how community-based jails, dubbed “Justice Hubs,” might function in an urban context to replace Rikers.

The Rikers Island Correctional Facility, a complex of 10 jails and about 10,000 detainees located northeast of LaGuardia Airport, has been one of NYC's most debated problems for decades—widely criticized for corruption, brutal mistreatment of detainees, and inhumane conditions.

Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform—a multi-disciplinary group of experts is proposing to shut down The Rikers and advocates for alternatives to single, centralized jails. The group released Justice In Design, a report that envisions an alternative to a single, centralized jail and details how community-based jails, dubbed “Justice Hubs,” might function in an urban context to replace Rikers.

"Developed in partnership with the nonprofit urban think tank Van Alen Institute, the design-based findings are a follow up to a March report that recommended a system of borough-based jails to replace Rikers, among other reforms to the city’s criminal justice system."

The d...

Dutch prisons converted into homes for refugees

2017-06-21T18:09:00-04:00

As the country’s crime rate and prison population have steadily declined for years, dozens of correctional facilities have closed altogether. So when the number of migrants started to rise—more than 50,000 entered the Netherlands last year alone—the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) saw a solution.

Many prisons in the Netherlands have been repurposed to house refugees who are waiting to be granted asylum status, a process that usually takes at least six months. Free to come and go as they please, the refugees are not allowed to work but are encouraged to learn Dutch and build connections with the surrounding community.

Improbable transformations of a Venezuelan architectural icon, as reported by CityLab

2017-06-02T20:53:00-04:00

Sometimes called a tropical Babel, the one-time symbol of the country’s progress wound up converted into a prison and, according to some of its former inmates, a torture center for political prisoners.

The Helicoide's design was initiated in mid-fifties, the times of Venezuela's economic prosperity. Grandiose, ambitious and strange, the project proposed a first drive-through mall with over 300 stores, a car showroom, gas station, car wash and even a repair shop. However, the building's destiny, was much more complex and chaotic than originally planned. Its long transformation from the intended techno-utopia to a functioning prison is regarded by many as a cruel irony symbolic of the country's's dramatically unstable political climate.

Rikers Island proposed for Laguardia Airport expansion

2017-04-05T18:46:00-04:00

The Island is uniquely positioned to accommodate an expanded LaGuardia Airport that would reduce delays and could serve as many as 12 million more passengers annually.

Last week, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio announced that the city would close Rikers Island jail complex. The news followed a report by the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform which recommended such action. The report also included a number of innovative ideas for a post-jail Rikers, including expanding LaGuardia Airport onto the island and adding a new runway and more terminal space.

Empathy Deficit; Archinect Sessions #96

2017-02-09T17:36:00-05:00

This week on the podcast we are joined by Emily Hunt Turner. Emily gives us an update on her restaurant/non-profit startup All Square, as we previously featured in her Working Out of the Box feature. We also talk about her time working as a lawyer for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as she detailed the challenges and struggles in the past, and concerns with the direction of the department moving forward.

Listen to episode 96 of Archinect Sessions, "Empathy Deficit":

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Download: this episode

Turning down tenants because of criminal records may be discrimination, says HUD

2016-04-04T17:36:00-04:00

In new guidance, released Monday, HUD tells landlords and home sellers that turning down tenants or buyers based on their criminal records may violate the Fair Housing Act. People with criminal records aren't a protected class under the Fair Housing Act... but blanket policies of refusing to rent to anybody with a criminal record are de facto discrimination, the department says — because of the systemic disparities of the American criminal justice system.

"Because of widespread racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal history-based restrictions on access to housing are likely disproportionately to burden African-Americans and Hispanics." - New HUD guidance on criminal records and the Fair Housing Act

For related coverage, check out these links:

Rikers Island is an environmental (and human) catastrophe

2016-03-22T18:23:00-04:00

Rikers is built on a landfill. The ground underneath the facilities is unstable and the decomposing garbage emits poisonous methane gas. In addition to extreme heat and poor air quality, flooding and crumbling infrastructure pose a serious threat, especially when superstorms like Hurricane Sandy strike. As the violence and human rights violations worsen, so do the environmental circumstances surrounding Rikers.

The article details flood-risk, extreme heat, a lack of air circulation and other air quality issues among other problems plaguing the prison.

For related content, check out some of these links:

What do museums have in common with prisons? More than you might think, according to artist Andrea Fraser

2016-02-25T17:37:00-05:00

The average crow takes less than two hours to travel from Sing Sing maximum-security prison to the Whitney Museum of American Art, institutions separated by just 32 miles of land along New York’s Hudson river. Yet few humans journey between them – museums and prison are at opposite ends of our society’s self-imaginings, and their populations tend not to intersect.

"The artist Andrea Fraser – provocateur, professor and performer who famously posed the question of whether art is, metaphorically, prostitution by sleeping with a collector on camera in Untitled (2003) – will focus on the relationship between galleries and jails in a new site-specific project opening at the Whitney on Friday."

Fraser, also known for her institutional criticism of Frank Gehry's Bilbao Museum, told the Guardian: "They’re really two sides of the coin of social inequality...Museums increasingly are warehouses of wealth, capturing surplus in the form of artworks that are no longer financially productive. Prisons are institutions that warehouse surplus labour and populations that have been economically excluded from the labour market."

Interested in other provocative art endeavors? Check out some of these links:

Raphael Sperry, President of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, on the "hauntingly real" computer game, "Prison Architect"

2015-11-11T12:45:00-05:00

space and building costs are just as much of guiding principles in designing real prisons as they are in Prison Architect. [...] "Prisoners themselves are generally not included in the conversation where the prison construction budget is allocated to different priorities, so their needs come last and cell size is generally set at the legal minimum," Sperry said. "The legal standard only bars 'cruel or unusual punishment'—a cell can be punitively small as long as it doesn't cross that limit."

More on the discussion around prison architecture:

How one California prison is betting on architecture to decrease recidivism rates

2015-10-21T13:05:00-04:00

this San Diego County jail, which houses everyone from petty criminals to accused murderers and was once known for its sickening decrepitude, is at the forefront of a new and, of course, controversial movement in prison design, one that manifests a counterintuitive idea: You could build a lockup so pleasant and thoughtfully devised that inmates would never come back. [...] Welcome to Las Colinas Women’s Detention and Re-entry Facility.

Architecture of correction: Rikers Island

2015-07-08T18:00:00-04:00

As long as the City of New York has owned Rikers Island, since the 1880s, it has been a place for the unwanted. For a time, pigs were raised for slaughter there. [...] was converted to a partial landfill, full of horse manure and garbage. The odor repelled its neighbors in the boroughs, and the refuse attracted a sizable rat population, which the city tried to contain by releasing wild dogs. [...] It took poison gas to kill off the rodents. Next the city moved humans to Rikers.

From a "clean version of hell" to blabaerskog

2015-05-03T23:01:00-04:00

On any given day, there are 80,000 U.S. prisoners in solitary confinement...has led some prisoners into a profound level of what might be called ‘ontological insecurity'

About a month ago the NYT published two pieces exploring two variants of the architecture of incarceration. The first essay, examined the stark conditions of United States’ only federal supermax facility. The second, explored The Radical Humaneness of Norway’s Halden Prison, designed by Erik Møller Arkitekter.

Previously; The NYT on prison architecture and ethics and Pacific Standard on How Prison Architecture Can Transform Inmates' Lives

The NYT on prison architecture and ethics

2015-02-17T13:34:00-05:00

Faced with lawsuits and a growing mountain of damning research, New York City officials decided last month to ban solitary confinement for prison inmates 21 and younger. Just a few weeks earlier, the American Institute of Architects rejected a petition to censure members who design solitary-confinement cells and death chambers. [...] What are the ethical boundaries for architecture?

Previously:

@Large: Ai Weiwei takes over Alcatraz with Lego carpets and a hippie dragon

2014-09-24T13:00:00-04:00

Welcome to prison, and a celebration of liberty. Ai Weiwei, the big man of Beijing, has spent years discovering pockets of freedom in the most straitened circumstances, resisting every effort by the Chinese government to shut him down. This week he opens a major new exhibition in a place that makes that resistance literal: on Alcatraz [...]. The United States has the highest incarceration rate on the planet. But this prison is decommissioned, and Ai is using it to extraordinary effect.

How Prison Architecture Can Transform Inmates' Lives

2014-06-18T16:08:00-04:00

Though many scholars focusing on penitentiaries suspect that staff-prisoner relations are molded by institutional architecture, little empirical work has been completed on the topic. Now, a new study led by Beijersbergen and published in Crime & Delinquency has concluded that building styles, floor plans, and other design features do indeed have a significant impact on the way Dutch prisoners perceive their relationships with prison staff.

ADPSP and the Architecture of Incarceration

2013-12-12T18:09:00-05:00

"ADPSP is asking the AIA to change their Code of Ethics to prohibit the design of spaces intended for executions and prolonged solitary confinement, as in 'supermax' prisons. This comes from the AIA's current code, which calls on members to 'uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors'—but includes no enforceable rules to provide discipline" - Raphael Sperry

Martin C. Pedersen interviewed San Francisco-based architect Raphael Sperry, ADPSP's (Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility) to get an update on ADPSP's ongoing effort to encourage architects from entering into the business of designing spaces "for killing, torture, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".

h/t demilit

Editor's Picks #344

2013-12-03T18:49:00-05:00

eric chavkin penned a review of "Glen Small: Recovery Room" an exhibit at Assembly in Los Angeles, organized and curated by Archinect's own Orhan Ayyüce. MightyMike (aka Michael Locke) commented "For local (Los Angeles) fans of Archinect, there's a wonderful example of Small's work in the Franklin Hills...the Leiberman House". For his part davidd felt "This review and Small's work seems to come from an ingroup/niche point of view".

eric chavkin penned a review of "Glen Small: Recovery Room" an exhibit at Assembly in Los Angeles, organized and curated by Archinect's own Orhan Ayyüce. He concluded "Despite the flaws the works of Glen Small offer so much that another architect could base an entire career on re-doing, modifying, repeating any one of his single works".

MightyMike (aka Michael Locke) commented "For local (Los Angeles) fans of Archinect, there's a wonderful example of Small's work in the Franklin Hills...the Leiberman House, designed by Glen Howard Small, AIA c.1989 and completed by Anthony Eckelberry in 1995". For his part davidd felt "This review and Small's work seems to come from an ingroup/niche point of view".

Plus, in latest edition of the series Working out of the Box, Archinect spoke with with Microsoft Design Leads Mary-Lynne Williams and Moneta Ho Kushner.

News
Brian Henry noted a move by Ohio towards banning LEED. katscan thought "It sure is about time, I was wondering why stat...

"Poczekalnia", a restaurant design inspired by prison

2013-11-22T19:07:00-05:00

"Poczekalnia", Polish for "Waiting Room", is the eleventh project of the collection "XII", by designer Karina Wiciak.

The designer has shared with us photos of the project and the following description...

Not only the interior but also the name of the restaurant itself is a kind of metaphor, because the prison itself can be euphemistically described as a kind of waiting room.

The entire interior was done in white and black pop-art colours, with the addition of orange fabric - as a characteristic element of clothing of convicts in prison.

Prison bars, and even the cells in which paradoxically the VIP rooms are located, are the main element of the design. The bar is also behind the prison bars, and the toilets are designed in the form of iron cages, enclosed with orange curtains and glass wall (outside).

Hanging lamps in the shape of handcuffs and a chandelier in the form of a key chain are another prison motives. Interiors are complemented by tables and chair...

BUREAU A’s “Parole” wins in Swiss Art Awards 2013

2013-09-10T21:04:00-04:00

Swiss firm BUREAU A recently won first prize in Architecture in the Swiss Art Awards 2013 for one of their latest projects, "Parole - Champ-dollon 1/24." Although the project looks like a simple mouse cage, it comes with a strong message about complex social issues.

"Parole" is a sculptural cage that is a reinterpretation of a part of the Champ-Dollon--a prison in Geneva, Switzerland that is known for its maximum occupancy ratios. The project highlights the debates regarding the role of architects and architecture when it comes to commissions of an ethically questionable and politically charged nature, like building a prison. Furthermore, the project emphasizes that architects should use their skills and tools to create structures that raise awareness of these debates and challenge these commissions instead of "quietly" designing them and aiming for perfection to appease the clients.

Precisely scaled to the ratio of laboratory mice at 1:24, "Parole" also addresses ongoing glob...

Failed Icon Of Social Housing Becomes New Home For Former Inmates

2013-09-05T18:48:00-04:00

It turns out pedestrians couldn’t be bothered to detour through the pixellated concrete compound. “Stairs were too steep, and people preferred crossing Blaak [the street passing under foot] at ground level,” van Schaik explains. “This left the bridge with serious problems. Most shops were vacant, as was the Supercube for a long time."

Prison design faces judgment

2013-09-04T18:04:00-04:00

And just as prisons in the U.S. are now designed to look not just secure and largely windowless but so nondescript that they practically disappear, architecture firms often coat their prison-design work in several layers of euphemism. Prisons and jails become "correctional facilities." On the website of the large corporate firm HOK Architects, which designed the 1997 Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown L.A., they are tucked into a broader portfolio of "justice buildings."

Ai Weiwei’s Music Video, Recreating His Detention

2013-05-22T11:48:00-04:00

Now Mr. Ai is answering the guards’ request in a different key. He is presenting them, and the world, with his first heavy-metal music video, one with detailed re-creations of scenes from his 81 days of detention. He also portrays fantasies he imagines flitting through the guards’ minds. Mr. Ai posted the video on a Web site, aiweiwei.com, on Wednesday morning, Beijing time.