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New York Governor Kathy Hochul's office has proposed transforming the 100,000-square-foot former Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood into affordable housing. Called Liberty Landing, the scheme is a joint venture between Camber Property Group and Osborne Association... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — ARTnews
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... View full entry
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. — Bloomberg
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... View full entry
Construction on NYC's first borough-based jail is officially underway, Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced. Work on the Kew Gardens, Queens facility marks the first major move to build four smaller and "more humane" jails in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. The $8.3 billion effort comes via the Borough-Based Jails Program, a controversial plan passed by the City Council in October 2019, aimed at closing the 10 jails now in operation on Rikers Island. — Urbanize New York
The new, approximately 105-foot-tall structure will include a 25,000-square-foot, two-level, multi-purpose community space, along with a 600-car public parking garage. The 866-bed facility will replace the current Queens Detention Complex, which is located adjacent to Queens Borough Hall and the... View full entry
New York City-based Weiss/Manfredi and Dallas-based Malone Maxwell Dennehy Architects (MMDA) have been selected by the Trinity Park Conservancy to redesign an existing jail facility in Dallas for alternative uses. The project comes to the two firms, MMDA will serve as Architect of Record while... View full entry
Oakland-based architecture and real estate development non-profit Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS) has unveiled a set of schematic proposals aimed at re-imagining Atlanta’s city jail as a Center for Equity. The plans follow extensive community consultation and design development... View full entry
But death chambers and many solitary confinement cells — they’re officially called segregation units, not incidentally — are extreme cases. Architects should not contribute their expertise to the most egregious aspects of a system that commits exceptional violence against African-Americans and other minorities.
The least the American Institute of Architects can do now is agree.
— The New York Times
The New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman has penned a column highlighting the moral implications of having architects design solitary confinement and execution facilities. In the article, Kimmelman explores the American Institute of Architect's reluctance to take a positive stand... View full entry
Community development non-profit Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS) has published a vision designed around the idea of "unbuilding racism" in light of the growing movement to abolish police and prisons that has garnered national attention in the wake of the anti-racism and policy... View full entry
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... View full entry
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?
— The New York Times
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... View full entry
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. — The Guardian
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— Curbed
The American Institute of Architect (AIA) has issued a statement denouncing the inhumane conditions that have been discovered over recent weeks across the country at the detention centers where undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers are being detained. The conditions as described by numerous... View full entry
