ADPSR celebrates a great step for human rights and for the profession of architecture: the American Institute of Architects has banned the design of spaces for execution and solitary confinement. We salute the AIA board and President Jane Frederick who made this binding commitment for AIA’s over 90,000 members, who constitute the majority of the architectural profession in the United States. Human rights are the foundation of a peaceful and just society, essential to ending discrimination and building a culture of inclusion, and we welcome AIA’s recognition of this shared vision.
ADPSR foresees important impacts of these Rule changes:
The new rules will make it harder to get prisons and jails built, since most contain solitary confinement. More complex urban jails, in particular, demand AIA member firms that have greater capacities to deliver complex projects with high design ambitions (which even urban jails can have, at least in name); we believe the desire to practice ethically and to retain their AIA membership will lead those architects still pursuing these projects to either refuse those commissions or insist they are changed to protect human rights.
The new Ethics Code will serve as evidence in legal cases and public arguments about execution and torture. 8th amendment cases about “cruel and unusual” punishment require proof of an "evolving standard of decency" against solitary confinement: nothing is a clearer demonstration than the way AIA has turned its back on this barbaric practice, calling solitary and execution inconsistent with health, safety, and welfare;
The new rules and AIA’s announcement of them will help further a cultural shift away from punishment and retribution and towards a culture of healing and restoration. This step makes it clear that medical professionals, who have long refused to participate in executions, are not alone, but in fact represent a growing social consensus that other professionals and social groups can and should join.
This code change is a sign that things can change and that they are changing.Architecture has historically been a white, male dominated profession that has participated in systems of oppression and injustice including segregation and mass incarceration. AIA -- which is reflective of the profession, but also has had a string of recent female and non-white leaders -- in their announcement recognizes “structural racism in the built environment.” AIA says they seek “a more equitable and just built world that dismantles racial injustice and upholds human rights” -- this is a major change from an organization that just in January rejected this proposal on the grounds that even our most racist and unjust laws are “norms of our society” that members should respect.
ADPSR began petitioning AIA for this change 6 years ago. We were rejected three times before today. Each time we came back with more information, more advocacy, and more allies, most critically including formerly incarcerated people. The victory for human rights that we celebrate today is due in equal parts to perseverance and to the power of collective action. Among those who joined in action are: Saleem Holbrook, a survivor of years of solitary confinement who courageously told his story to the AIA National Ethics Council last year; Dr. Robert Greifinger, who gave up his position in correctional health when he refused to participate in executions and has helped lead other professionals to follow that view; attorneys and staff with Human Rights Watch, ACLU, National Religious Coalition Against Torture, and Amnesty International who helped explain human rights to AIA -- many times more than once; and the AIA San Francisco, Boston, and Portland chapters, who signed early letters in support of this campaign. The AIA New York chapter deserves recognition for their growth and change: after forcefully opposing this proposal in 2014, earlier this year they spoke up demanding “architects no longer to design unjust, cruel or harmful spaces of incarceration within the current United States justice system.” The leadership of formerly incarcerated people is an essential part of this story: without their testimony about solitary confinement and their demands for change, white-collar professionals including ADPSR’s membership and leadership would never have understood the importance of human rights or found our way towards ending professional complicity in the abuse of human rights in the built environment.
Inspiring as this code change is after a long struggle, we know that this is only one step toward rooting out racism in the US criminal justice system and the built environment more generally. Since 2004 ADPSR has maintained that design professionals should boycott the design of prisons and jails and demand transformative institutions built on principles of healing and restoration. We welcome the leadership of Designing Justice + Design Spaces, who have blazed new trails showing architects how we can work respectfully with communities of color to make new spaces for restorative justice. We welcome the demands of Design As Protest, and add our voices to their call for an end to racist, cruel and demeaning policing and courts as well as prison and jails.
ADPSR believes that human rights are a solid foundation on which to begin building systems of healing and development instead of retribution and racism. We hope that everyone in the design professions, from sole practitioners to big firms, from AIA New York to AIA National, will continue forward finding ways to heal the deeply ingrained wounds of racism, cruel, and injustice that are built into many of our institutions, our cities, and our structures. As our late board member Michal Sorkin used to say when signing off: Onwards! In Solidarity.
image credit: Miguel Bermudez “Escaping Identity,” winner of the 2007 ADPSR prison design boycott poster competition.
