AGAINST CARCERAL ARCHITECTURE
05-28-2025
Dear Members of the Architectural Community,


I urge you to cease your participation in the design of prisons and related typologies, and to take an active stance against carceral practices in all their spatial, institutional, and symbolic forms. To ignore this discussion or to remain silent is, in itself, a tacit form of violence.


It is essential to recognise that the architecture of prisons and other repressive facilities is not fundamentally distinct from other typologies. The critical distinction lies in whether a design primarily excludes bodies not belonging to the intended group (as in the case of residential buildings, schools, or hospitals), or whether it confines bodies with no possibility of leaving the space. Architectural design is always a political act – it is never solely about space, but about the relationships that space enables or inhibits. Our bodies, human and more-than-human alike, are shaped and affected by architectural power. The prison is legally and spatially bound to this reality and stands as the most emblematic form of repressive architecture: it is deliberately aggressive and hostile.


Prison infrastructure does not function as a tool of crime prevention or rehabilitation. Rather, it sustains a system of selective control that punishes poverty and otherness – marginalised communities in particular. As numerous studies and case analyses have demonstrated, the prison-industrial complex transforms human existence into a means of profit. Architects, by engaging in the design of carceral buildings, become complicit in an apparatus that reproduces systemic violence rather than providing care. Work on prison-related projects constitutes a form of professional participation whose ethical implications can no longer be overlooked. We must reject the masking of violence through humanitarian façades, clever design, or good intentions, which ultimately serve only to legitimise the logic of incarceration. There is no such thing as a “better prison.”


I call upon the Czech Chamber of Architects to revise its Code of Ethics and to reflect the typologies its members ought to engage with. An instructive precedent can be found in the New York division of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), whose code prohibits participation in the design of prisons, police stations, and other sites of confinement. A redefinition of professional ethics is not radicalism, nor a passing trend, but a responsibility towards the spaces we create. Without architecture, the prison could not exist.


Like Leopold Lambert in a similar call We Pledge to Never Participate to the Design of Spaces of Detention, I appeal to those of you who are employed without the freedom to choose your clientele to insist on being reassigned from projects involving carceral programmes. I likewise urge architectural practices to categorically refuse such commissions and to make their position publicly known. I call upon educators in architectural studios to refrain from setting prison design as a task and instead guide the next generation towards envisioning a world without prisons. Finally, I encourage you, fellow students, to have the courage to resist such assignments and to decline any participation in them.


Architecture possesses the power to contribute to social change – not by beautifying repressive typologies, but by dismantling them and replacing them with spatial strategies rooted in trust, care, and community justice. Let us commit to decriminalisation, to supporting communities, and to prevention – through the design of accessible housing, healthcare facilities, educational institutions, and spaces for gathering. Let us create the places that marginalised communities are so often denied.

To those in search of further argumentation, I offer my diploma thesis NOTES ON PRISON for reading, reflection, and discussion. Through an online archive, it maps carceral strategies and decodes the language of prison materiality, while also briefly presenting the prison population and the principles of carceral capitalism.


To all those who wish to join this call and publicly declare their professional stance, I invite you to sign your name below. This open appeal follows in the footsteps of similar initiatives and aims to articulate a collective gesture with the potential to transcend our profession and contribute to a more caring world.


Cordially
Adéla Vavříková

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©2025DIPLOMA THESIS
ADÉLA VAVŘÍKOVÁ









THEORETICAL TEXT
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.