Archinect - News

Michael Kimmelman on the future of jails in NYC

2019-12-19T19:29:00-05:00

Will New York’s new jails be places where visiting families feel welcome? Will the jails provide space for police officers and medical staff to train together? For detainees to confer with lawyers? For therapeutic assistance and recreation? Outside as well as inside, will they be scaled to their surroundings, will the city be open to other sites and will the buildings architecturally represent, as borough landmarks, our civic ideals and values?

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times, provides an spirited overview of the ongoing developments in New York City regarding the planned decommissioning and relocation of the prison facilities located on Rikers Island. The large-scale infrastructure and architecture practice AECOM was recently selected to design four high-rise replacement facilities that are to be located one per borough (except on Staten Island).

Attempting to place architects at the center of the debate, Kimmelman writes, "If we’re going to keep building jails, can new architecture help heal what ails the penal system? Jails are works of architecture, after all."

Interrogating the impacts of NYC’s Rikers jail replacement plan

2019-12-12T14:06:00-05:00

The height of the new jail towers was later slashed from 45 storeys to a maximum of 29, but the damage had been done. The images of these brutish concrete silos symbolised a rack’em and stack’em approach, attracting criticism from both prison reform advocates and the communities in which these fortified slabs were to be planted.

Writing in The Guardian, critic Oliver Wainwright examines competing visions for the future of New York City’s prisons.

Earlier this year, AECOM was selected to envision a dispersed carceral archipelago for the city that would take the place of the sordid Rikers Island prison. The plan has faced strong opposition from groups like No New Jails NYC and others who seek to have the city move away from mass incarceration and toward alternative forms of justice administration.

Los Angeles County cancels contract for $1.7 billion jail

2019-08-15T07:00:00-04:00

In a 4-1 vote, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed today to cancel a $1.7 billion design and build contract with McCarthy Builders that it had approved in February. “The contract with McCarthy Builders for a custody facility does not fit this board’s vision of a care-first model,” said Supervisor Hilda Solis.

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: