ARCHITECTURE IS A BUFFER

The existence of the law presupposes outsiders and prisons’ existence, which are an irreplaceable part of the normal society. While crime must be punished, the individuals who commit these crimes will one day be rejoining society. Thus the prison system represents less a tool for punishment and more a chance to reform an individual while removed from the general population.

To make the system better, we must first determine the biggest problem in the current prison system.

In the past 25 years, Victoria’s population has grown by 40 percent, and its prisoner population more than trebled. From a prisoner population of 2271 in 1992-93, Victoria housed 7258 prisoners in 2017-18. In the process, Victoria has gone from having one of the lowest incarceration rates in the world, with 50 prisoners per 100,000 population in 1992, to 147 prisoners per 100,000 people in 2018.

To solve this problem, the government built more and more prisons in the past few years. The growing size of the prison system is an important reason for the privatization of prisons. In Australia, over 18% of our prisoners are in the private-run facility. Corporations, generally motivated by profit, will only spend as much as they have to when running prisons.

The prison system works wrongly and continues to grow. But people have forgotten that what we want to solve at first is overcrowding, and the best way to solve this problem is to reduce the number of prisoners. This kind of every crime leading to a ‘prison as a first resort mentality’ is unnecessary and wrong. Cause prison should be seen as a last resort; we should try to avoid prison terms when it can.

We Are The Prison

Concept Diagram

This is a timeline of the prison system. As you can see, the process is divided into three stages. In the current system, we only have halfway house that provided to those who have been released from prison, but there is no halfway house for the pre-prison stage people. I designed a halfway house for the pre-prison stage. This halfway house can provide a place to live for some criminals who have not committed serious crimes. Then I combined this halfway house with an ordinary halfway house so that the two types of users live in the same building, and that make this building the buffer of the prison system.

Environmental Analysis

PRE-PRISON DURING PRISON POST PRISON

ARRESTED JAIL PRISON

MANDATORY COUNSELING COMMUNITY SERVICE HOUSE ARREST

HALFWAY TO PRISON

Site Analysis

HALFWAY HOUSE SOCIETY found this site on the main road in the city of Melbourne, it’s on the road leading to the harbour from the center of Melbourne. On one side of the road is Melbourne Assessment prison and the other side is Melbourne West police station. This unique address satisfies the needs of ‘buffer’ both physically and philosophically.

Proposition

Responding to the overcrowding problem in the prison system.

Combinational Half Way House

HALFWAY TO FREEDOM

HIGHWAY BRIDGE

TRAM STATION

DOCK

RAILWAY STATION CITY CENTRE PRISON

UPHILL

GARDEN POLICE STATION

LIBRARY SEA

STADIUM SHOPPING RAILWAY