The China Central Television Building by Rem Koolhaas image:Wikimedia

The city of Buckeye, Arizona, recently got a glittering new supermax prison. Designed by DLR Group, an architecture and engineering firm that says its mission is “to elevate the human experience through design,” the $50 million Rast Unit at the Arizona State Prison Complex building can hold up to 500 prisoners in 12-by-8-foot cells, many of them intended for solitary confinement.

In December, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) rejected an amendment to its ethics code that would have prevented architects from designing buildings just like the Rast Unit. Drafted by the advocacy group Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility(ADPSR), the new language would have enforceably barred the AIA’s roughly 100,000 members from designing spaces “intended for execution or for torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, including prolonged solitary confinement.” That means everything from the $900,000 San Quentin Lethal Injection Chamber, constructed in California in 2010, to facilities at Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay.......Continue Reading

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