New
Concept of Incarceration
Cheshire CT
Inmates in United States are segregated in small concrete units and are shut away without human contact for years. In fact, United States has the most number of people behind bars per capita than any other nations in the world. Prison architecture in America is essentially built to punish and isolate rather than to rehabilitate. Its system and typology is reassessed as a critique of the American prisons and to rethink of a new system with a goal of rehabilitation.
A new system of
rehabilitation
The site is designed with rehabilitation and individual’s growth in mind. The strategy is evolved based on the belief in individual’s potential to learn and change through various connections and interactions happening in different scales. It is a place where one starts to regain their daily connection back with surrounding landscape, spaces, visitors and with each other. It is designed to feel that they are part of the whole by sharing spaces with various programs and moments of connection while maintaining their own individual realm and entity. On site, buildings are connected through circulation and a constant flow of movement where they build relationship with each other through playing of distance and adjacency. The sense of intimacy is carried into the building, where residents and visitors engages with one another through various types of interaction from visual to physical interaction.
The design is based on the precedent of Suomenlinna prison in Finland, a facility with minimum security. It is an open prison system with 100 inmates and a low sentence plan, and a place where one is exposed to the open environment. The site is open to the public where residents can connect with people visiting from outside and feel that they are part of the community. This new type of incarceration act as a bridge connecting and minimizing the gap between closed prisons and the real society, where one can be prepared to return to the real world.
