Archinect - News

Philly's infamous police headquarters faces an uncertain future as a symbol of brutality

2023-02-06T18:51:00-05:00

The city of Philadelphia is prepared to release a report detailing a months-long community engagement effort officials say will inform the fate of the Roundhouse, the unusual concrete building that served as police headquarters for more than six decades. Many of the residents who participated in that process said they want to see the shuttered building at 7th and Race streets repurposed as a community hub that recognizes the site’s long history of police abuse.

Philadelphia has a long-frayed relationship between its police department and the community, including most notably the 1985 MOVE Bombing that claimed the lives of 11 activists while displacing another 250 people and destroying 61 homes. The Roundhouse has a central role in this fraught history, and now opinions are split over its proposed future redevelopment.

Robert Geddes, one of the building’s three designers has chimed in to say he feels it should be given a second life as a font for social justice activities and other types of community-based activism. The 125,000-square-foot Brutalist-style structure has also been floated as the potential site of affordable housing, though its layout remains difficult to convert by most estimates.

A final decision on its fate is expected sometime within the calendar year.

Urban planners take action to defund the police by calling for the American Planning Association to respond

2020-09-23T14:16:00-04:00

2020 has brought an increase in activism as the public reached its final tipping point from the racial and social injustices happening across the nation. With the inexcusable deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, and others caused by police brutality, individuals across industries have taken note and voiced their concerns. With forms of allyship sweeping the nation, architects, academics, and urban planners have expressed their opinions and action plans. Although dismantling racial inequalities and systemic racism within the profession will not happen overnight, groups put their experience and training into action to respond to these injustices.

In early August, Brentin Mock of CityLab in Pittsburgh reported on the responses of "several hundred" urban planners as they call for the American Planning Association to support defunding the police. Housing/food planner Sara Draper-Zievet, who is one of the eight co-authors of the letter, spoke with Mock on their steps ...

3D-printed stadium created by FIU students helped Florida police prepare for the Super Bowl

2020-02-03T11:58:00-05:00

In preparation for yesterday's Super Bowl, the Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) utilized a highly detailed 3D-printed model of the Hard Rock Stadium. The model was created by students at Florida International University's (FIU) College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts along with the school's Robotics and Digital Fabrication Lab.

Measuring 4' x 5', the model intricately shows the stadium's bleachers, hallways, exits, rooms, and even structural elements. It can be separated and reconfigured, allowing viewers to focus in on focal areas of interest. In total the printing took over 3,500 hours and was the result of months examining digital documentation of the stadium, walkthroughs, and calibration and programming of the printers.

“This was something unique, for FIU and MDPD, the creation of a physical model to use in training,” said Professor Shahin Vassigh, Director of the RDF Lab in a statement. “It’s not necessarily the scale that is unique – architects make models for d...

A look at school design leading students towards prison

2018-07-25T16:13:00-04:00

In the past — or in schools with higher proportions of white students — a student acting out might garner an intervention by their principal, or a concerned teacher’s phone call to parents. But today, throughout the US, discipline in many schools has become a matter of law enforcement, rather than education. In New York, the majority of school guards — 5,000 School Safety Agents patrolling 2,300 public and private schools — are civilians employed by the School Safety Division of the NYPD.

Out of fearful reaction to school shootings and other safety concerns, many school environments look and feel like prison to the students attending. Through an extensive background on how school design has gotten to this point, "Where School Meets Prison" examines the impact prison-like design has on students and argues damaging results of higher student arrest rates and discrimination.

With a strong police presence and physical security infrastructure, student Andrea Colon shares how school design can become a pipeline to prison.

Civic beacon or bunker? Photographer Kris Graves documents all of New York City’s 77 police precincts.

2018-03-13T15:06:00-04:00

What’s the difference between a school, a library, and a police precinct? They’re all civic institutions designed to communicate their contribution to a well-functioning society. [...] Kris Graves photographed every one of New York City’s 77 precinct station houses for Urban Omnibus. The blue and white car, the badge, and the uniform all communicate “police” on city streets, but the building, the police’s permanent home in the neighborhood, conveys a particular message. What does it say?

If you enjoyed photographer Kris Graves documenting the grid-disrupting topography of the Bronx for Urban Omnibus a while ago, you'll love his latest piece: Beacon / Bunker, a series of photographs of every one of New York City’s 77 police precinct station houses across the five boroughs. "Whether the precinct is a reassuring beacon of safety or a bunker of malfeasance may depend more on individual or collective associations than on the architecture."

40th Precinct, Bronx. © Kris Graves.

23rd Precinct, Manhattan. © Kris Graves.

105th Precinct, Queens. © Kris Graves.

83rd Precinct, Brooklyn. © Kris Graves.

121st Precinct, Staten Island. © Kris Graves.

Find the complete set of all 77 NYC precincts over at Urban Omnibus.

Jeanne Gang's 'Polis Project' — an experiment in empathetic policing

2016-07-25T13:20:00-04:00

Conceived by MacArthur “genius” and architect Jeanne Gang, the simple project is part of her broader proposal to reimagine isolated, fortress-like police precincts as welcoming community centers. In her vision, better police precincts could house a barber shop, a garden, a gym, and lounges with free wi-fi—all designed to draw community members to hang out in stations and eventually build friendlier and more trusting relationships with the cops sworn to protect them.

In Gang's project, the West 10th district's police station in North Lawndale, Chicago, includes a basketball half-court right next to it, as an attempt to create shared spaces between police and the community whom they serve. Gang's 'Polis Project' was first exhibited at the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial, and was conceived in response to the report on "21st Century Policing" commissioned by President Obama.

Related on Archinect:

Does Jeanne Gang's architecture inspire social justice?

2016-07-21T12:36:00-04:00

In this New York Times interview with Ginia Bellafante, Jeanne Gang discusses the importance and challenges of designing work that isn't simply aesthetically pleasing, but that influences positive changes in social behavior and policy. In addition to her work on waterways, she discusses her idea behind designing a fire rescue station in one of New York City's poorest and most violent neighborhoods:

You feel like you trust a firefighter, a rescue worker. And those doors on the building are often open. And we even put a bench in the front of the building so people can actually sit there instead of taking this approach of creating a fortress, which I think is a contrast to what we see in the design of police stations.

And so really designing this Fire Rescue 2 started me thinking about, are there ways that design could help improve the relationship between community members and police if we looked at the architecture? Not that it can solve everything. But I think, you know, maybe it can ...

Revising the city in the aftermath of violence

2016-07-11T18:39:00-04:00

A mass shooting scenario changes the function of every object in the built environment. [...] The buildings themselves, the fabric of the city, ends up not mattering so much. In fact, sometimes it becomes a kind of enemy. [...] Americans aren’t going to rebuild their cities to accommodate the possibility of violence. The people who protect the people in those cities will just have to learn to see them differently.

Related on Archinect:

LAPD directs officers to treat homeless people “with compassion” in new vague policy

2016-06-22T14:22:00-04:00

The Los Angeles Police Commission approved a new policy directing LAPD officers to treat homeless people with “compassion and empathy.” The policy was meant to be a broad statement – a “philosophy more than it is the nuts and bolts,” [Cmdr Todd] Chamberlain recently told police commissioners. More specifics will come in future directives, he added. But the new statement [unsurprisingly] was met with some skepticism from homeless advocates.

“Gary Blasi, a retired UCLA law professor who studies homelessness, said it would take more than a policy to improve interactions between officers and those living on the city’s streets. To do that, he said, the city should limit laws that unfairly criminalize situations involving homeless people — ‘so that the police are not involved in the first place.’”

More about homelessness in LA on Archinect:

LA's homeless population has increased by 11% in a single year

Homes of the homeless, seized: L.A. cracks down on free housing

To each their own home: A peek into the “HOME(less)” exhibition at USC

Los Angeles approves plans to tackle homelessness crisis, but funding is still unclear

How Jeanne Gang wants to make police stations community-friendly

2016-04-05T17:58:00-04:00

“A police station could be welcoming...And if you can remake space, you can change a culture." Out of that comes Polis Station...Working in their home city, [Studio Gang] looked at a typical station on the troubled West Side. Their proposal reimagines the station house, placing the secure areas at the back and a variety of public services – a library, daycare, mental-health-care providers and a community room – all sharing a grand public entrance and adjacent to new park space.

NYPD admits to using "Stringrays," military tech that sweeps up cell data

2016-02-11T19:20:00-05:00

The NYPD has used cell-site simulators, commonly known as Stingrays, more than 1,000 times since 2008, according to documents turned over to the [NYCLU]. The documents represent the first time the department has acknowledged using the devices. The NYPD also disclosed that it does not get a warrant before using a Stingray, which sweeps up massive amounts of data. Instead, the police obtain a “pen register order” from a court... [which] do not require the police to establish probable cause...

Stingrays operate by imitating cell phone towers, sweeping up massive amounts of user data without their knowledge or permission. They force cell phones to connect to them and then track the user's location. Originally a military technology, they have been increasingly bought and used by local and state police forces, despite concerns that they violate fundamental rights to privacy.

Broadly speaking, police forces have been reticent to disclose if they possess or employ Stingrays, and have fought efforts to regulate their use.

For more information on surveillance in the modern city, check out these links:

Not all sidewalks are created equal in D.C.

2015-05-26T15:59:00-04:00

Instead, he lives on Buena Vista Terrace SE, a grim stretch of low-rise apartments pushed up against the Maryland border. And on Buena Vista Terrace, just standing outside can get you in trouble. [...] The law is meant to fight disorderly conduct, but some lawyers and the people arrested for the “crime” say it’s routinely used to harass people seen as undesirable: protesters, the homeless, and black men.

Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale

2015-05-22T17:21:00-04:00

The police in Venice closed an art installation in the form of a functioning mosque on Friday morning, after city officials declared the art project a security hazard and said that the artist who created it, Christoph Büchel, had not obtained proper permits and had violated laws by allowing too many people inside the mosque to worship.

"There is no mosque in Venice, so the thousands of Muslim tourists visiting Venice must pray in a converted factory in Mestre, which is the polluted part of Venice.

This until the swiss artist Buechler converted an abandoned and unused former catholic church into a functioning mosque for the duration of this year's Art Biennial.
Short lived though, Venice Municipal Authorities just yanked the permit.
Reason: Security andSafety-it was too popular, too many people wanted to see it or pray in it.
As usual security trumps everything"

As quoted by a friend.

The Eerie Architecture of East Germany's Secret Police

2014-09-22T12:05:00-04:00

The sterility of the photos, especially the images of prisoner bedrooms, hints at the degree to which the Stasi kept a tight lid on dissenters. In prison culture (or at least prison culture as it’s portrayed in the movies), there’s a lot of graffiti: on the walls, in library books, between cells. “We were searching for any scratching or anything in the cells—usually you would think they were sending messages—but it was very clear you couldn’t see anything”

Prepping for World Cup, Brazilian police build mock favelas to train officers

2014-06-16T18:51:00-04:00

Police simulations such as these offer a peculiarly spatial insight into the ways humans attempt to make sense of the world. [...] Someone builds a surrogate or a stand-in—a kind of stage-set on which to test their most viable theories—then they control that replicant world down to every curb height and door frame. Architecture then comes along simply as ornamentation, in order to give this virtual world a physical footprint