The Board of Directors of AIA New York has recently released a statement discouraging the design of criminal justice facilities that uphold the current system. Taking a stand against designing unjust, cruel, and harmful spaces of incarceration, AIA NY solicited architects to reflect on the broader social implications of their work.
The Police Center Operative Headquarters by Spasoje Krunic is a building that technologically is way ahead of its time. It is an extravagant vision based on futuristic concepts and a sophisticated morphological and constructive technology, which combined, form a unity with distinctive aesthetical features. Owing to its construction and well-formed dynamics, the Operative Headquarters finds its place somewhere on the borderline between architecture and free design. The building is associated with new constructivism, a movement that has never been established in Serbian architecture, nor is it a current trend. Rather, it developed out of a specific set of structural requests imposed on the architect.
At this year’s Chicago Architecture Biennial the directors Joseph Grima and Sarah Herda asked participating architects to demonstrate the “State of the Art of Architecture" by submitting projects that they felt told a story about architecture’s importance in society. As explained in this video by Politico Magazine, native Chicagoan Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang Architects responded to this call by looking at an issue that has plagued American cities in startling ways in recent years: the troubled relationships between communities and their police forces. Often hidden behind fortress-like buildings, police stations in their current form tend to project an image closer to hostile than welcoming. But Gang believes it doesn’t have to be that way.
