“The fundamental question facing society is whether we see prisons as warehouse to store the incorrigible or greenhouses to restore the redeemable.“ The Bishop of Liverpool, BBC Radio 4.

My project focuses on the architecture of empowerment within the typology of control: the Prison.

In recognising the balance between power (control) and empowerment (education) that must exist in a
prison my project starts to address the issue of reform by enabling an architecture that above all supports learning and personal wellbeing.

Theoretically, the aim of the project is to readdress the balance between education and punishment in a building typology that has remained unchanged for centuries. Research states that two thirds of prisoners re-offend within two years of release. This statistic proves that the prison system is failing both prisoners and taxpayers “at an annual cost of more than £11bn.”

The success of a prison is reliant on its inhabitants learning to change for the better, yet the dehumanising effects of the architecture undermine most human efforts of support. My project re-forms the physical structure of the prison, breaking in up into the domestic scale, and in doing so becomes an exercise in master planning and urban design. Spaces for living, learning and working typically separated in the ‘real world’ have, in prison, merged under one roof and my project plans to reverse this.

Essentially my design aims to set a new standard in prison design, where value for money extends beyond the cost of construction, maintenance and management and takes into consideration prison re-admissions and the crime rate.

HMP Olympic Village
Two Birds, One Stone.

The untimely economic depression England is currently facing has already started to affect the plans. The amount of housing in the Olympic Village has been cut, with the view of completing after the games take place. Meanwhile, the Home Office’s plans to build one of its Titan prisons in London are progressing, to be finished by 2013.

My project proposes that the Home Office uses its prison budget to complete building plans in the Olympic Village, with further plans to convert the development once the games are finished. The type of  accommodation required by athletes is more akin to that of prisoners than family housing. Each will need a small private and secure room to sleep, and shared facilities. The transport infrastructure will enable family to visit prisoners easily and the legacy of the prison itself will be to provide jobs to people moving into the area. With the right planning the prison and the community can develop together.

MArch, The University of Sheffield School of Architecture, 2009
Studio: Em-power-ment
Studio Tutor: Florian Kossak