ARTH 355 Studies in Architecture: Spaces of Restorative & Transitional Justice

• Thursdays, 11:45 am-14:15 pm
• Course delivery TBA
• Instructor Dr. Cynthia Hammond

Architecture has been mobilized to deal with crime and punishment since the origins of organized human society. This linkage has its most obvious manifestation today in carceral typologies such as the police station, the courthouse, and the prison, building forms that are known, paradoxically, to reinforce injustice. Beyond such precedents, what might design for alternative justice look like?  In this course, we will explore the emerging field of design for restorative and transitional justice. Restorative justice seeks to effect reconciliation between perpetrators and survivors, while transitional justice aims to foster community-wide or nation-wide reconciliation between offenders and oppressed groups. In some countries, such as Colombia, there is a well-developed design discourse on what reconciliation should look and feel like, in a spatial sense. In Canada, however, during the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, alternative justice workers had to contend with "make do" or "found" spaces such as schools and churches, which were inseparable from the kinds of trauma that the commission aimed to redress. This course will introduce students to the history of carceral design in industrial societies, as a background for understanding the recent rise of design for alternative justice processes, and will explore the spaces that emerge when architecture is called upon to facilitate justice, healing, and reparation.