Called to the bars


We’re off to prison... to check out a raft of new penitentiaries whose design is promoting a new view of the formerly grim approach to keeping prisoners


Words by Stephen Hitchins

The last time I went to prison I did not spend the night before at the Ritz. After visiting the newly refurbished Plaza Athénée hotel in Paris – one of a whole swathe of refurbished, extended and reopening hotels for the city – I went to La Santé.

This legendary prison has been open to the public before its renovation begins for a reopening in 2019. Yes, France is about to turn the page on a shameful chapter of its penal history by renovating its most infamous prison. It was all a bit scary. All fear is worse than reality, just as all hope tends to be better than fulfilment. The weather did not help. Heavy clouds hung across the building like a false ceiling as I went along to see what it was like.

La Santé prison in Paris c1868La Santé prison in Paris c1868. Photo: Charles Marville

Notorious for its bad conditions, its filth, blood, and fear, La Santé has been the star of several movies, famed for its guillotine, and its clientele. They have included Apollonaire, Genet and Carlos the Jackal, the war criminal Maurice Papon, and the gangster Jacques Mesrine, public enemy number one, who was only the second prisoner to escape. As remarkable escapes go 1986 saw the most incredible: the wife of jailed bank robber Michel Vaujour landed a helicopter on the roof and the couple flew off to freedom.

Opened in 1867, La Santé was built to hold 1,400 prisoners. In recent years, it has held 2,300. When it reopens in 2019 the prison will have 800 cells. Considering the significant sums of money spent in the UK on both new prisons and refurbishing of old ones, maybe there is something here to consider with regards interior design that others miss?

La Santé in 2007La Santé in 2007. Photo: Michael C Berch

In France, there are just 66,000 prisoners compared to the UK’s 86,000, a number far larger than the country’s army. The numbers incarcerated shame our society. In Sweden and the Netherlands, they are closing prisons.

The obsession with sending people to prison has meant that the large, oppressive prisons built in Britain in the 19th century have long been thought inadequate. There are few votes in reducing prisoner numbers; politicians see it as a PR-disaster area, and the tabloids hate any idea of reform that might prompt accusations of feather-bedding inmates.

Two views of PriSchool by Glen J Santayana that combines prison with a school of criminology, a pre-release centre, and a community centreTwo views of PriSchool by Glen J Santayana that combines prison with a school of criminology, a pre-release centre, and a community centre

Historically, correctional facilities have been the architectural expression of competing philosophies of incarceration at that particular time.

Working with Buschow Henley, more than a decade ago Hilary Cottam developed an educational model for prisons made up of 11 networked ‘houses’ each accountable for 36 people living in a working and learning community that saw warders as ‘facilitators’ of on-the-job training. In the USA, rather than regarding prisons simply as a means of punishment that might ensure ex-convicts have no other future, a much larger and more ambitious yet similar system of merging incarceration with education to promote rehabilitation and productive members of society, was devised in 2013 by Glen Santayana, while he was still a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Two views of PriSchool by Glen J Santayana that combines prison with a school of criminology, a pre-release centre, and a community centreTwo views of PriSchool by Glen J Santayana that combines prison with a school of criminology, a pre-release centre, and a community centre

PriSchool is a prison that integrates a school of criminology, a pre-release centre, and a community centre, in an attempt to combat the challenges of recidivism, and allow prisoners to regain a sense of confidence and dignity. This in a country where since the war on drugs was declared more than 30 years ago the prison population has spiralled 500 per cent, 92 per cent of prisoners incarcerated for non-violent crime. Santayana sought to address these by rethinking what a prison might achieve in a building where prisoners and students could learn from each other.

Raphael Sperry, founder of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility has campaigned to have the American Institute of Architects forbid members from designing execution chambers or units for solitary confinement, and Deanna Van Buren, a principal of Forum Design Studio, has championed restorative justice through a series of workshops carried out inside and out of prisons in North America.

Located in El Catllar in Catalonia, three views of Mas d’Enric, a penitentiary that overturns preconceptions and demonstrates that architecture can rethink contemporary approaches to prison designLocated in El Catllar in Catalonia, three views of Mas d’Enric, a penitentiary that overturns preconceptions and demonstrates that architecture can rethink contemporary approaches to prison design

In the UK, Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) is an organisation core-funded by the Arts Council and delivering arts-based projects in prisons. Through its work over the past 17 years, it came to the conclusion that prisons were built expressly to prevent educational development, and poor design was one of the main reasons for the system’s failings. Working with Will Alsop and Wates Construction at HMP Gartree, Rideout devised a Creative Prison project. Its ingenuity lay in relocating many of the standard existing facilities such as for sports, educational areas, the library, and meeting areas, to maximise their benefits.

There are new ideas aplenty out there. Architect Margot Krasojevic has a concept for a hydroelectric waterfall prison where reinforced steel embedded within holographic filtered glass panels creates a surreal environment that gives the illusion of a boundary-less, kaleidoscopic panopticon.

Located in El Catllar in Catalonia, three views of Mas d’Enric, a penitentiary that overturns preconceptions and demonstrates that architecture can rethink contemporary approaches to prison designLocated in El Catllar in Catalonia, three views of Mas d’Enric, a penitentiary that overturns preconceptions and demonstrates that architecture can rethink contemporary approaches to prison design

More realistically, CF Møller Architects in Denmark (its London office was responsible for the Darwin Centre Phase II extension to the Natural History Museum) has developed a 32,000 sq m state prison in Falster as a series of star-shaped wings that create a condensed urban domain with a variety of spatial environments. All of the wings have a view of the landscape rather than prison walls, there is a plaza and a series of streets linking the whole complex in what feels a less restrictive and more communal setting that on completion this year should, in the words of the architect, ‘provide a sense of dialogue with the outside world’. Each building has its own identity.

Located in El Catllar in Catalonia, three views of Mas d’Enric, a penitentiary that overturns preconceptions and demonstrates that architecture can rethink contemporary approaches to prison designLocated in El Catllar in Catalonia, three views of Mas d’Enric, a penitentiary that overturns preconceptions and demonstrates that architecture can rethink contemporary approaches to prison design

Mas d’Enric in El Catllar, Tarragonès, designed by AiB and Estudi PSH and completed in 2012 is a 74,000 sq m penitentiary built alongside a 130,000 sq m housing complex that looks more like a college than a prison, the designers striving to work within the contradictions of the system.

Andreas Tjeldflaat and Gregory Knobloch came up with a challenge to that system with its 499 Summit Jersey City prison design. This comprises three high-rises forming an arch to symbolise an inmate’s development from incarceration through to transformation, moving on to integration.

Halden Prison, Norway. A place with no iron bars, and where no one has attempted to escape, it has been called the ‘world’s most humane prison’. Photo: HLM ArkitekturHalden Prison, Norway. A place with no iron bars, and where no one has attempted to escape, it has been called the ‘world’s most humane prison’. Photo: HLM Arkitektur

A women’s prison in Iceland by OOIIO Architecture is a panopticon, but one without sharp corners. Flooded with natural light, it includes a living wall of moss and flowers. Not far from Graz in Austria, the Leoben court and prison complex, designed by Josef Hohensinn, was thought by some visitors to be a country club for white-collar criminals, so attractive was it when it opened 12 years ago. In fact, it is for all classes of criminal awaiting trial.

Not accepted by everyone, but then not easily ignored either, along the concrete wall of the facility is a line from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: ‘All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person’. Bright, quiet, even serene at times, devoid of graffiti and vandalism, it is a place of maximum security outside and maximum freedom inside, but Hohensinn insists an individual’s dignity was all he really cared about.

Taking such ideas further than anyone, at Halden Prison in Norway, Erik Møller Arkitekter has attempted a middle-ground between hard and soft punishment, punishment and rehabilitation, in what has been called the world’s most humane prison, a place where doing time has become dignified. It houses some of the country’s most dangerous criminals. The stink of sweat and urine is far away. In the Norwegian system there is a focus on human rights and respect, which may be one reason that recidivism is far below international averages, at just 20 per cent of inmates returning to jail after two years.

Halden Prison, Norway. A place with no iron bars, and where no one has attempted to escape, it has been called the ‘world’s most humane prison’. Photo: HLM ArkitekturHalden Prison, Norway. A place with no iron bars, and where no one has attempted to escape, it has been called the ‘world’s most humane prison’. Photo: HLM Arkitektur

With a prison list of 69 per 100,000 population compared to 753 in the USA, 10 years’ work and the £17m equivalent of kroner appears to have been worth it. There is enthusiasm to work there, enthusiasm for transforming lives in a way hard to find in other countries. With a well-stocked library, cultural centre, state-of-the-art gym complete with rock-climbing wall, jogging trails through the woods, guards eating their meals with the inmates, music classes, a sound studio, and Dolk, a Norwegian Banksy-style graffiti artist commissioned to create art for the prison, it is more like college than anything.

The institutional flavour could not be any less. ‘Both society and the individual simply have to put aside their desire for revenge, and stop focusing on prisons as places of punishment and pain’ one Norwegian prison official told the press. ‘Depriving a person of their freedom for a period of time is sufficient punishment in itself without any need whatsoever for harsh prison conditions.’ There are no iron bars. No one has attempted to escape.

With fewer prisoners, greater resources, and significantly less gang culture, Norway’s solution for the design of prisons is not easily replicated in other countries. Yet Australia has adopted a humane approach to incarceration to combat the disproportionate aboriginal population in its prisons. Indigenous people comprise 2.5 per cent of the total population, yet constitute 25 per cent of prisoners. TAG and Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects designed the West Kimberley Regional Prison as a complex of group houses not dissimilar to Halden, in a scheme nominated best civic building of 2012.

Historically, discipline and punishment meant panopticism, Jeremy Bentham’s idea of incarceration – a place where thinking seems to have stopped. With blocks radiating out from a central point in the standard 19th-century design, it looks like architecture as asterisk. It sounds odd to say, but it is nonetheless true: we punish people with architecture. The building is the method.

We put criminals in a locked room, inside a locked structure, and we leave them there for a specified period of time. High perimeter razor wire, concrete cells and narrow corridors do not encourage belief in people’s ability to change and improve, and simply applying more of the same precludes evidence-based practice and scientific research from entering the equation.

Incarceration away from the community is no way to foster integration with it in the future. The more institutional the less personal; mega-sized does not necessarily equal healthy, safe, and secure. Somewhere between stifling overcrowding and solitary confinement, keeping people in barbaric conditions solves nothing. Gone are the Victorian theories that determined prisons should be unpleasant places to deter people from committing crime. As important is the provision of multipurpose spaces to be used for rehabilitation, such as academic and vocational classrooms, activity and workshop areas, multifaith space and counselling rooms for both individual and group therapy.

Halden Prison, Norway. A place with no iron bars, and where no one has attempted to escape, it has been called the ‘world’s most humane prison’. Photo: HLM ArkitekturHalden Prison, Norway. A place with no iron bars, and where no one has attempted to escape, it has been called the ‘world’s most humane prison’. Photo: Erik Møller Arkitekter

While it is questionable if the world needs more prisons it is undeniable that it needs better ones. But reform of the prison system does not win votes. Any ideas also hit the obstacle of design failures built in the UK in the Sixties and Seventies that were found inadequate in terms of supervision and control due to poor sightlines, dangerous blind spots, and the ease with which fittings could be liberated and turned into weapons.

The Nineties saw the introduction of prisons designed, financed, built and run by private companies. Supporters of privatisation argue that it will lead to cheaper, more innovative prisons, while organisations like the Howard League for Penal Reform argue that private prisons are flawed both in principle and in practice. And private prisons held a higher percentage of their prisoners in overcrowded accommodation than public sector prisons every year for the 13 years to 2010/11.

Overcrowding, understaffing, and a general lack of care given to these grim buildings and the people inside them, together with an insatiable appetite for banging people up and tough-guy posturing, has led to the degradation of human beings left to rot.

In the UK, 22,000 of them share cells designed for one person. Education, therapy, exercise, work all take staff. Lack of staff means inadequate supervision, leads to sexual abuse, drug trafficking, self-harm, and suicide. Some 256 prisoners died in British prisons in 2015, 88 taking their own life. As former politician and one-time inmate Denis MacShane put it, ‘the death penalty has been abolished, yet too many people leave prison in a coffin’. Most of this goes unreported. Visceral hatred of criminals is not a very good starting point for their rehabilitation. Currently, 47 per cent of adults reoffend within a year of leaving prison, a figure that rises to almost 57 per cent for those who had served a sentence of less than 12 months.

Ineffective spells behind bars, investment in more intensive community sentences and public health solutions would cut crime and save the taxpayer money. Design should be one of the tools for rehabilitation. It is not easy, especially as most of those involved in such projects have never lived in one. Design makes little difference if people are locked in their cells all day, as David Wilson, a criminologist and former prison governor has pointed out. What happens, or does not happen, within the walls of prisons matters even more than the walls themselves.

The court and prison complex at Leoben in Austria. Designed by Josef Hohensinn with great respect for individual dignity, it is a place of maximum security outside and maximum freedom inside. Photo: Paul OttThe court and prison complex at Leoben in Austria. Designed by Josef Hohensinn with great respect for individual dignity, it is a place of maximum security outside and maximum freedom inside. Photo: Paul Ott

Nevertheless, the intriguing question comes back to my mind: has anyone who stayed a night in the Plaza Athénée ever also had an overnight stay in La Santé? Margaretha Geertruida ‘Margreet’ Zelle MacLeod, aka Mata Hari, stayed there before she was arrested, charged with espionage and shot in 1917. Coco Chanel worked for the German military intelligence Abwehr, and slept in a suite at the Ritz throughout the Second World War (she was none too keen on the interior: she installed her own furniture. In 1945, she fled to Switzerland for a decade to escape arrest and trial). One wonders how many other guests in those grand hotels overstayed their welcome and found themselves installed in La Santé?

The luxury hotels of Paris have finally come to terms with a brutal reality: grande dames, no matter how good their bone structures, do not age well forever, and glitzy new players and younger beauties have invaded their turf in a brash wave of building. Ah, the extremes of bed and board!








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