"No More Prisons"

I do love architecture, although it's really just a general interest. I don't work in the field, possess any formal training, or pretend to have more than passing knowledge of the subject. But: I actually don't understand how people aren't passionately interested in architecture, especially as it relates to issues of sustainability and global development. I mean, chances are you live in a man-made building, right? It affects your life.

And though I usually read the Architect's Newspaper for the gossip and intriguingly gossamer content ("In [a talk entitled 'The Trouble with Icons', given at the Royal Academy, Graham] Morrison attacked buildings that are 'distorted into unneccessarily complicated shapes,' and specifically called out Will Alsop's Fourth Grace (or Cloud) scheme in Liverpool. He later dubbed the Alsop building a 'donut on sticks' for an audience which included Alsop himself."), I found myself quite moved by a call for a boycott of prison architecture amongst design professionals in the latest (2.16.05) issue.

The essay is unfortunately not available online, but the core sentiment is summed up nicely in the following paragraph:

While some claim that our ever-expanding prison system has quelled a long wave of drug-related violence and returned us to the relative safety we enjoyed in the 1970's, the many ups and downs of crime rates since 1970 are sharply at odds with the constant increase in the number of prisoners. To make matters worse, studies document that Americans feel much less safe than we did then. It is our current culture of fear and ignorance that drives the prison system, not the other way around. Despite mounds of data on the failures and inequities of the prison system (most collected by the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics), the public is largely uninformed about prison issues. The members of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) believe that building prisons has not only failed to significantly reduce crime, but has caused additional social problems. Continuing on the current path of imprisoning even more people will do little to improve our society, and will especially injure our already most-embattled communities. ADPSR members have pledged to not participate in the design, construction, or renovation of prisons, and we ask [architects and design professionals] to join our boycott.

Raphael Sperry, the author of the article, is the president of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibilty and works at 450 Architects in San Francisco. Definitely check that out, citizens of the world.