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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... 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
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. — The New York Times
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — The New York Times
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... 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 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. — The Wall Street Journal
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... View full entry
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. — Next City
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. ... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— the Guardian
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:Rikers Island is an... View full entry
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. — psmag.com
"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 — Metropolis Magazine
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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."
— latimes.com
