Archinect - News

Demolition work for Lower Manhattan's superjail is making Chinatown residents 'terrified'

2024-04-09T15:16:00-04:00

The demolition of ‘The Tombs’ Manhattan Detention Complex to prepare for the 300-foot ‘Jailscraper’ (aka the ‘Chinatown Jail’) in Lower Manhattan is meting out further headaches for residents around the Columbus Park area, the majority of whom are elderly, ABC7 reported recently.

Cracks and other noticeable damage are now beginning to appear in adjacent structures as the 900-bed behemoth is being taken down in advance of the construction of a controversial new facility that is promoted as being more ‘humane’ than its predecessor and the city’s Rikers Island facility — despite activists’ criticisms.

"We absolutely do not trust Gramercy Group with anything anymore," a member of the group Neighbors United Below Canal told journalists. "They violated the trust of this community. They violated the trust of the building next door. They've cracked their building. There's water seeping into this building as we speak."

In response, Councilmember Christopher Marte has asked the city's Buildin...

Banksy offers support to turn an infamous UK prison into a new arts center

2021-12-06T15:20:00-05:00

Banksy is getting into the shuffle in the effort to preserve a grade-II listed former prison complex in England called Reading Gaol.

The BBC is reporting that the famed street artist intends to sell the stencil he used for an Oscar Wilde-inspired mural placed on the building’s exterior wall in March at a charity auction which he hopes will command somewhere on the order of £10 million ($13.3 million) to be used towards creating a new arts center.

The historic structure has been up for grabs since 2019 and is reportedly under consideration to be purchased and remade in a scheme authored by the local Reading Borough Council.

A rendering of the proposed arts center plan. Image courtesy Reading Borough Council.

Now, with his literary idol in mind, Banksy’s pledge would help support the Council’s effort that could keep the former complex from being turned into apartment buildings while also paying homage to the artistic underpinnings from which the Picture of Dorian Gray author drew some...

The debate around prison reuse swells as reform measures continue to decrease incarceration rates dramatically

2021-11-11T12:51:00-05:00

Some prisons have been successfully transformed into whiskey distilleries, youth hostels, museums and boutique hotels. Others have been demolished, sometimes over the objections of local preservationists. But there’s a third option: Carceral sites can be reoriented as places that actively work to undo the damage wrought by mass incarceration.

The movement to design spaces that are actively working to undo some of the social harms caused by mass incarceration is still fairly nascent, with salient projects in Atlanta and other places serving as models that can be applied in the age of bail reform, alternative sentencing, and other measures that have reduced the overall prison population by up to 42% in certain states.

“Our view is that more architects should instead help those who are formerly incarcerated so they don’t go back to prison, and to support populations who are targeted and at high-risk for incarceration,” DJDS founder Deanna van Buren told Archinect’s Antonio Pacheco in a 2019 interview. The impetus should be shifted even further towards designing spaces that alleviate the sources of crime in the mold of DJDS. As Thoreau said: “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

The crisis at Rikers Island could spark a radical shift in the way architects approach prison design

2021-09-28T09:00:00-04:00

The question of how to remake the city’s jails has sharply divided city officials, who are intent on maintaining lockups, advocates for prison rights and even architects. As the city pushes for new designs that might make its jails feel more humane, many activists and some city officials are pushing for the city to invest more in social services in underserved communities, which could keep people out of prison to begin with.

A total of twelve people have died at Rikers this year alone. Unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, and a staffing shortage have only added to the growing chorus of voices calling to shut down the 400-acre prison, which the city has announced plans to do by 2027.

The nearly $9 billion replacement initiative would add a borough-based jail system using updated guidelines that were crafted last year through a coalition of planners, community activists, and city agencies, although some architects continue to view prison reform as essentially a moral issue and not one that can necessarily be erased by better or more humane design techniques. The AIA officially updated its Code of Ethics in December to reflect some of the ascendent thinking surrounding the issue.

“You cannot make an unjust space more just by creating more natural light,” NOMA president Pascale Sablan said. The Times has more on the movement toward progressive prison design in New York City here.

...

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...

Social Design and Restorative Justice: Architect Deanna Van Buren teaches us how to re-design with values

2021-03-03T09:30:00-05:00

For Deanna Van Buren, designing towards justice and equity is more than a trend; it's a lifelong calling to dismantle a system that perpetuates oppression and suppression for Black and Brown communities. Back in October 2019, Archinect chatted with Van Buren to learn more about her firm Designing Justice + Designing Space (DJDS) , and what it means to "design spaces for peacemaking, inside and out."

Many may be familiar with her remarkable work involving decarceration and "justice architecture" by unbuilding racism. Van Buren makes it very clear that while many may call her a "justice architect," her mission works towards ending mass incarceration by developing infrastructure that "counters the traditional adversarial and punitive architecture of justice—courthouses, prisons, and jails."

When we spoke with Van Buren in 2019 she shared, "We started a new practice together because we felt that traditional architecture and real estate development firms were not practicing in alignment...

Deanna Van Buren on designing beyond incarceration

2020-03-10T18:58:00-04:00

Van Buren’s most ambitious undertaking so far is the reimagining of a hulking 471,000 square foot Detention Center in downtown Atlanta. [...] Van Buren has been working with social justice organizations and a mayoral task force to transform the site into an “Equity Center” that will incorporate financial literacy, job training, access to legal services and other community needs.

Writing in The New York Times, journalist Patricia Leigh Brown profiles Deanna Van Buren, co-founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS), an Oakland, California-based architecture and real estate development non-profit that is working to end mass incarceration.

Archinect profiled the work and practice of DJDS in a Studio Snapshot last year. In that interview, Van Buren explained the nature of her practice: "Our office is rooted in creative strategies that are empathic and always include deep listening to those most impacted by the problems we are seeking to solve. We are in service to those who have had no voice in the built environment. We are a relatively new practice so the thesis hasn’t changed much, but has certainly become more refined."

Private prisons, including ICE detention centers, are now illegal in California

2019-09-17T12:33:00-04:00

The recently passed AB-32 bill in California prevents the state from "entering into or renewing a contract with a private, for-profit prison to incarcerate state prison inmates, but would not prohibit the department from renewing or extending a contract to house state prison inmates in order to comply with any court-ordered population cap," according to the legislative text.

Under the bill, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations will phase-out the department's existing contracts by 2028.The bill, once signed by California Governor Gavin Newson, is set to go into effect on January 1, 2020.

The Guardian reports that move would close all four of the state's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, which are run by private prison company GEO Group. The news comes as debate within the architectural profession intensifies regarding the moral and ethical implications of designing such facilities. The private prison business is booming under Pres...

Under Trump, the private prison business is booming

2019-07-15T15:55:00-04:00

In the 2018 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 396,448 people were booked into an ICE detention facility, up 22.5% from a year earlier, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Between October and January, apprehensions along the southwest border rose to 201,497, up a third from the same period a year ago.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the private prison business is booming as a result of the hardline immigration policies of President Donald Trump.

Despite the growing controversies surrounding the government's treatment of detained migrants in increasingly makeshift and inadequate facilities, the industry's growth is expected to continue.

According to WSJ, in a recent research note surveying the business dealings of private prison companies CoreCivic and GEO Group, investment bank SunTust Robinson Humphrey writes, "We expect criminal alien populations housed by the private sector to increase due to heightened enforcement and increased border apprehensions.”

WSJ also writes that over the last year, with new facilities going up from California to Mississippi, private prison companies have fared better financially than many other industries, even amid an overall market rally.

San Francisco could close its youth jail

2019-06-07T15:02:00-04:00

A vote this week by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has put the city on a path to virtually end youth incarceration, the first major city in the United States to do so.

Following an 18-month study guided by formerly-incarcerated teens, city officials have agreed to a plan that will close San Francisco's Youth Guidance Center juvenile jail by the end of 2021.

The move will make San Francisco the first large city to eliminate its youth incarceration program.

The measure, approved this week with a 10-1 vote by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, will not only close the city's juvenile hall, but will also end the practice of incarcerating arrested teens while they await trial. The initiative also spurs city officials to work with community members to develop alternative forms of rehabilitation for teens convicted of crimes, and will create a Youth Justice Reinvestment Fund to fuel those efforts. The restorative justice-focused fund will be sustained by the money saved from closing the jails and will help provide employment, affordable housing, and other services.

San Francisco currently spends $13 million per year to operate the jail, which, acco...

Explore mitigating human suffering via design in this New School symposium

2017-02-23T13:41:00-05:00

As cities densify and the global population increases, much has been made of reclaiming physical spaces: but how does one reclaim a place that is bound up in tragedy, whether that tragedy was natural or man-made? On March 3rd and 4th, Parsons the New School for Design will host a symposium featuring Lina Sergie Attar, a Syrian-American architect, writer, and activist who hails from Aleppo.

In addition to Attar's keynote address, the symposium, entitled “Making Home in Wounded Places: Memory, Design, and the Spatial," will explore several dozen case studies dealing with refugee shelters, the repurposing of Latin American prisons into shopping malls, and how painful memories of the past have been represented and memorialized in places including a Warsaw ghetto. Those interested in registering to attend can do so on the website.

Why the design of prisons matters

2016-09-28T17:22:00-04:00

the world’s prisons are home to an estimated 10 million people globally and this number is rising. The world’s prison population has gone up 10% since 2004, and in some countries, such as Indonesia, the increase has been as high as 183% [...] Architecture sends a silent message to everyone walking into any place. It tells you what to expect and where the limits of behaviour are. Prisons are the same.

In my view, design is crucial to creating an environment in which prisoners can live and not become institutionalised. This means providing spaces for staying in contact with families, work, education, and playing sport.

For more on carceral architectures, follow these links:

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 #333

2013-09-17T12:26:00-04:00

The new Court of Justice building in Hasselt, Belgium designed by a team comprising, Berlin-based J. MAYER H. Architects and local firms a2o-architecten andLensºass architecten, officially swung its doors open to the public on September 13th. Donna Sink felt "This looks SO BEAUTIFUL! I saw it from the Hasselt train station last March and it literally took my breath away - it makes a great statement on the skyline. To see the interiors and details are so well considered makes me happy".

John Southern penned a review of (a book I have been wanting to read, since I first saw a blurb for it a few weeks ago) Joe Day's "Corrections and Collections: Architectures for Art and Crime" (2013, Routledge).

Therein he concluded "Joe Day makes it clear that we are entering a new period- one where the models of cultural consumption and the constructs of punishment are so similar, that the humanity contained within either system is obscured by the totalizing effects of a homogeneous and sinister architectural typology".

Plus, in the latest edition of the Working out of the Box feature, Archinect interviewed Makoto Mizutani and Benjamin Luddy, founders of LA-based product design studio Scout Regalia.

News
After 15 years of leadership co-founders, Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr have decided to transition from the organization and launch a fund to support future growth.

Over at the San Francisco Gate Liz Pfeffer reported that in today’s market "Well-heeled techies ar...

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."

Should Architects Design for Solitary Confinement?

2013-08-20T20:22:00-04:00

A hunger strike in California state prisons calls for an end to indefinite solitary confinement in Security Housing Units, known as SHUs. Raphael Sperry has challenged fellow architects to ban the design of SHUs. Beverly Prior responds, reflecting on a career designing for incarceration. Joe Day sees societal values mirrored in the growth of both American prisons and museums.

Previously: Building A Better Prison

Prison Landscapes

2013-07-15T12:12:00-04:00

After two centuries of incremental growth, the number of correctional facilities and museums in the United States tripled, from roughly 600 prisons and 6,000 museums in 1975 to more than 1,800 prisons and 18,000 museums by 2005.

As unprecedented hunger strikes continue at Guantánamo Bay and in California federal prisons, two recent features on Places explore the politics and aesthetics of prison design.

In an essay adapted from his book Corrections and Collections, Joe Day compares the proliferation of American prisons and museums since the 1960s and finds intriguing parallels in how institutional architectures have responded to cultural movements from Minimalism to post-Millenialism. Art and crime collide in buildings from Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon through Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim to contemporary work by Peter Zumthor, Rem Koolhaas and others.

In Geographies of Detention, adapted from an exhibition at the California Museum of Photography, Catherine Gudis and Molly McGarry present art and documentary work, by Sandow Birk, Alyse Emdur, Richard Ross and the Guantánamo Public Memory Project, that investigates prison landscapes.

Building A Better Prison

2013-06-26T12:51:00-04:00

It might not seem like an architect’s area of expertise to reform inhumane prison conditions. But like attorneys, journalists and doctors, architects have a code of professional ethics. They’re required to “uphold human rights in all of their professional endeavors.” Architect Raphael Sperry says that prisons designed for prolonged solitary confinement violate the human rights of the inmates, and that he and other architects are ethically bound to do something about it.

Previously on Archinect:

Prison Architect and the moral dilemmas of a prison simulator

2013-05-09T11:38:00-04:00

“Part of the research I did for that game is I went around to Alcatraz in San Francisco because I wanted to have a level where you break into a prison,” Chris Delay, one of Introversion’s co-founders said in an interview. “I started working on how to simulate a prison and how it was going to work. It was then that it occurred to me that building a prison was quite good fun, and that it shouldn’t be, but it is.”

Movie Review - 'Herman's House' - Trapped In Solitary, A Prisoner Specs Out A Dream House

2013-04-24T15:19:00-04:00

The off-screen protagonist of Herman's House, Herman Wallace, already has a dwelling for his body: a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, aka Angola. But the documentary's on-screen protagonist, Jackie Sumell, wants him also to have a place for his soul: a dream house for a man who desperately needs dreams.

DC's Lorton Prison to be converted into apartments

2012-11-26T15:38:00-05:00

At one time, the dorm housed as many as 40 or 50 prisoners packed together like sardines, according to Caperton. The plan is to convert the space into two or three one-bedroom apartments, which is a considerably more comfortable arrangement than the last residents of the building had. Caperton says that in the 1980s and '90s Lorton Prison had a reputation for being dangerously overcrowded.

Design Against Prisons

2012-05-07T14:36:00-04:00

in professional practice, there’s a tendency to lose track of the initial spark that drew us to the profession and fall into a routine of designing similar projects for a familiar client type without thinking too deeply about it. It’s hard to make any money in the profession without a certain amount of repetition and standardization. So when a project comes along that challenges your values, that would be a good time to reconnect with the reasons you got into your profession in the first place.

polis has published an interview with Raphael Sperry, former president of ADPSR, and founder of the Alternatives to Incarceration / Prison Design Boycott Campaign.

The Architecture of Juvenile Detention in America

2012-04-11T11:45:00-04:00

On any given night in the U.S., there are approximately 60,500 youth confined in juvenile correctional facilities or other residential programs. Photographer Richard Ross has spent the past five years criss-crossing the country photographing the architecture, cells, classrooms and inhabitants of these detention sites.

499.SUMMIT - Jersey City Prison Design

2012-04-06T20:35:00-04:00

499.SUMMIT is a conceptual proposal for a futuristic high-rise urban penitentiary in Jersey City which seeks to challenge the conventions of traditional prison design. The project, a collaborative effort by grad students Andreas Tjeldflaat and Gregory Knobloch, was part of the PennDesign studio FUTURE PRISON DESIGN.

Breaking Out and Breaking In

2012-01-25T15:09:00-05:00

Breaking Out and Breaking In is an exploration of the use and misuse of space in escapes and heists, where architecture is the obstacle between you and what you're looking for.

Editor's Picks #244

2012-01-02T11:28:03-05:00

Anthony Stephens offered up his euology for Ricardo Legorreta. "Ricardo Legorreta is the reason I began to study architecture...The spaces he designed had something long gone from most architects, soul. Unlike so many of the steel, glass and white wall designs that seem so clever and popular nowadays, his buildings could convey a feeling to those that laid eyes on the spaces he designed."

In Top 10 Design Initiatives to Watch in 2012—for the public good, John Cary, offered up a "a simple meditation on initiatives poised to advance the field, and how they can be scaled up, refined, tweaked, borrowed, and leveraged."

While in the latest edition of the Contours feature The Year’s End: The Political, Economic, and Social Perspective, Sherin Wing contends "that’s what all those 'Best of' lists are about. They are designed to soothe us". After reviewing the various social, economic and political turmoils of 2011 Sherin concludes, "if there is one lesson we can learn from all of these movements, it is that architects must all engage in the movements and processes that are meaningful them. They must be thoughtful about them. And become involved directly. Because this is the time of true change."

While Orhan Ayyüce, starts a new feature NEXT SERIES: RADAR LOVE in which he is tell us what he is interested in currently. He writes that while various discussions regarding in...

Starchitects Design Glamorous Prisons for Manhattan’s Elite

2011-07-22T13:37:08-04:00

Shigeru Ban, known for his paper tube structures and disaster relief projects, as well as several ground-breaking homes in Japan, has produced a small minimum security prison. Just eight blocks north of the Americano, the Shutter House opens and closes it’s tightly perforated metal shutters as the warden sees fit.

Heated Controversy Over Shipping Container Prison Cells in Australia

2011-05-09T13:52:41-04:00

In a move that could be viewed by some as a regression to the late 1800s when convicts were shipped from England to Van Diemens Land (Australia), a local prison will next week begin a trial housing inmates within shipping containers converted into maximum security cells. Political proponents calim they are safe, secure and cheap; civil libetarians say they are inhumane and not secure.

Inexpensive yes, but effective?