Culture/conflict/colors : an architecture of incarceration

Abstract

Crime-fighting has become one of the fastest growing industries in the United States. Consequently, the construction of facilities which serve as the end-product of that fight, prisons, has become one of the nation's fastest growing industries as well. The architecture of those facilities, which logically would fall somewhere in the middle, has yet to catch up. The intention of this project is to begin to explore the possibility for architecture within the context of the prison. It investigates ideas of space-making within a building which combines programmatic complexity with a requirement for security and control. It addresses notions of individual versus collective within the culture of the prison. It questions the relationship of the public to the imprisoned, of outside to inside.