NOTES
ON PRISON

FAQ
Dictionary
Manual of Archive
Against Carceral Architecture

CZECH VERSION

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Prison bars operate as material agents that structure visibility, authority, and confinement, both within prison walls and in the wider social landscape. In dialogue with new materialist thought, metal is revealed not as inert but as vibrant – resonant, malleable, and politically charged. Through artistic and critical interventions, the solid forms of carcerality are refigured as sites of resistance and transformation.

enclosure / base
metal, private property , zoo, separation, visibility

LANDSCAPE
radical noticing

Prison siting reflects political and economic strategies that extend carceral power into rural and post-industrial landscapes. Through spatial displacement, marginalized populations are removed from urban visibility and embedded into infrastructures of punishment under the guise of economic development. The analysis traces how these geographic tactics mask social control as rehabilitation, and calls for reimagining carceral land use through abolitionist and community-centered frameworks.

enclosure / base
separation, visibility, factories

VISUAL LANGUAGE
noticing

Prison architecture materializes a set of affects, atmospheres, and political imaginaries that exceed its concrete walls. Its aesthetic choices—rigid geometries, punitive textures, and symbolic ornaments—do not merely reflect power but participate in its enactment, persuading bodies and shaping thought. To trace the carceral ornament is to follow the subtle force of matter in the making of punishment.

enclosure
metal, concrete, public space, narrative

WALL
critical noticing

The prison wall is both architecture and apparatus—an instrument through which legal and political authority is materially enforced. As a structure of containment, it not only delimits space but transmits force, encoding hierarchies and exclusions. Operating as both sensor and threshold, the wall produces and conditions the bodies it encloses, rendering visible the silent infrastructures of punishment while naturalizing the violence of carceral space.

enclosure / base
repetition, separation, private property, concrete, borders

The online archive NOTES ON PRISON forms part of a diploma project undertaken at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, within Studio Architecture I. The overarching aim of the archive is to present and describe the practices, strategies, and associated architectural matter through which power is exercised within the prison system. These practices and spatial elements are subsequently revealed within different contexts and typologies.

The project’s political dimension contributes to the discourse on prison abolition, while also serving as a professional appeal to the architectural community: to learn to recognise spaces designed for oppression and violence, and to refuse further participation in their production. Instead, it calls for the use of imagination as a design tool, encouraging the creation of a society grounded in care and social equality.

At the top of the webpage, readers will find (1) a list of frequently asked questions related to prison abolition, (2) a glossary of terms, and (3) a manual explaining the structure of the online archive, including its categories, tags, and entries.