Prison Design
by Patrick Kearney

Purpose-built strutures like prisons generally lack the qualities of refined aesthetics and creative use of materials of traditional architecture and may confront an alien environment that has its own deeply imbeded historical and visual vocabulary resulting from both cultural & functional paradigms. Revivalis, Historicist, or any design based solely on traditional principles, will retard creativity. The romanticism of prison architecture is imbued at San Quentin where the earliest and architecturally most significant building clearly reflects the need for historical belonging. Other traditional designs, borrowing select elements from traditional and Post-Modern architecture are often architectuarally nondescript with no architectural elements added to the generally crude aesthetics or the barn-type form as either decorative motifs, as direct visual iconic references to their intended purpose, or as unambiguous statements of their correctional character. Some have attempted reinterpretation of the traditional with mixed results; however, it can be argued that the idea(s) of self-help construction and emphasis on appropriate technology may eventually work, and that the adoption of abstract geometry in the buildings can be seen as a search for individual architectural solutions.

Prison architecture should be expressive and understandable to all and should employ a form language which invokes in prisoners a sense of belonging to the present and the hope of the future.

Here, we have a design approach that is entirely innovative & fuctional while remaining environmental, morphological, and semiotic in a tripartite operational principle of modern conceptual design techniques, rather than a straight, literal transplantation of traditional character. Besides the obvious disregard for the existing built environment, and without capturing the essential symbols of the Valley architecture, it is a pseudotraditonal design with mixed products of uneven quality.

The distorted expressions of prison buildings, the lack of garish colors & the use of prefabricated industrial materials only deny the heritage and the authenticity which old monuments like San Quentin embodied and which inspired to imitate medievil classics such as the Bastille, the Chateau d'if, or Reading Gaol...in which only the image of the monuments sought was important in reference to available visual sources. In his departure from this style, the architect here was seeking an affinity through the reinterpretation of certain arcane features borrowed from prisoner-of-war (P.O.W.) camps and through the expression of some esoteric and anachronistic features common to Gothic military fortifications. This is appropriate and historically contextual and is considered an improvement rather than a distraction.

While the architect can be cited as disregarding the spirit--if not the letter--of Post-Modern American architectural vocabulary, he has reinterpreted that vocabulary into an everyday language which can be more easily fathomed...with literal readings of original thought.

Clearly, this project shies away from addressing the conflicts and diversions of modern life and is a decisive departure from both the approaches of transplanted traditional architecture and its modern reinterpretation. The artist was not encumbered by conflicting perceptions of what a prison should look like nor by the difficult quest of expressing identity through form (without resorting to traditional imagery)-- which does not appeal to modern design sensibilities--and without recognizing the existence of past, local, building traditions. These simple, elegant buildings are functional and completely at home in their evnironment without being a landmark like their counterparts in scale.

The effect goes deeper than subtle references through geometry or the obvious use of architectural icons and calligraphy. With all the grace and elegance of the Berlin Wall, the use of concrete construction further reinforces the expressive values of the design while providing climatically, thoroughly sound buildings without being encumbered with historical precedents. Of special interest to architects in pursuit of the silent eloquence of space and the quintessential presence of form, the innovative and unprecedented solid walls of the exterior give little clue as to what is inside, and narrow, vertically-slit, widely spaced windows--like gun ports of olden times--add to the buildings sense of impenetrability, reflects the designer's fasination with the mystical interpretation of prison architecture, highlights the relationship between architectural production and the cultural politics of identity, and illustrates the search for image with which most inmates, as well as the larger society, can be happy.