Beyond Punishment: Designing a Humane Model for Incarceration
Princetown College
For my final major project, I decided to design a juvenile rehabilitation centre located on the current site of HM Prison Dartmoor. The hypothetical centre hosts children aged 10-17, and is more like a boarding school than a typical prison. The aim of the site is education, rehabilitation and well-being, the layout is campus-like inspired the famous Halden Prison in Norway.
For the project, I designed four buildings-
The main building included the reception, family rooms, counselling rooms and the kitchen
The Library building is three stories and includes the dining hall on the ground floor, classrooms on the first, a double height library on the second and a double height indoor courtyard on the third.
The secure building came later in the project as a response to concerns over security and safety, this consists of two floors, the ground floor hosts 22 bedrooms that are designed with neurodiverse needs in mind, as well as a shower block and staff rooms and offices, the first floor consists of 24 rooms with a shower block, and leads to the rooftop garden spaces.
The majority of pupils will find their accommodation in the ‘Villages’, these are made up of hexagonal shaped clusters inspired by beehives as well as emergency housing. The Hexagons have been designed to be flat packed and quickly assembled, there are many ‘villages’ on site and these are split by age as well as gender. 10-12 year olds stay in hexagons of 8 pupils, 13-15 year olds in ones of 4 and 16-17 year olds in groups of 2.
The aim of this project was to respond to the growing concerns of the justice system in the UK. Focusing on juvenile offenders, it imagines a new type of incarceration where the ethos is rooted in rehabilitation, education and well being.
Big Ideas,
Real Impact.
Click on the crest above to read the report of my project, written as though a newspaper report were addressing the design of the college, it explains in detail the design process and my decisions behind this project.