DESIGN | academyretroit

ACADEMY RETROIT DESIGN PROPOSAL

The site is located in Downtown Detroit - 594 Clinton St, Detroit, MI 48226. The site was meant to house The Wayne County Jail, a $300 million state-of-the-art jail facility. The construction work for the jail begun in September 2015, Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano and Sheriff Benny Napoleon were both in attendance at the ground breaking ceremony to offer remarks about the unique facility. The jail was meant to house 2,192 beds, the 715,000 sq. ft. facility should have consolidated prisoners from three existing jails. However inline with the decline of the city, this jail was never finished and today the jail is nicknamed “fail jail”. The half-built $300 million Wayne County jail sits abandoned, a victim of cost over-runs of nearly $100 million and an ensuing grand jury probe. It’s been untouched for more than a year (Clark, 2014).

Site Area: 115585 m2

Academy Retroit represents a new concept for prison and prison education, therefore this site was chosen consciously so that the demolishment of the "fail jail" and the construction of Academy Retroit and the birth of this new prison concept could be celebrated.

ACADEMY RETROIT DESIGN PROCESS

After studying behavioral therapy and the impact of reward strategies on individuals, it was decided that the progress of the scholars should be visible architecturally. To do so, the bottom four floors house educational facilities - third floor houses foundation year individuals who have just started the process of rehabilitation and ground floor houses advanced scholars, as they will soon rejoin the society. Fourth floor is used for health facilities, such as gym, swimming pool, sports hall as well as a medical center. Top four floors are designed for accommodation, fifth floor houses foundation year students and eighth floor houses advanced students. This arrangement allows advanced students to have a more visible view to the society.

This arrangement is visible on the façade of the building. The middle floor – Health facilities – is designed to have a very dense façade with a little openings and views to the outside and the top floor and bottom floor which is for advanced students will have the most visibility to the society. This shows the process of rehabilitation through the architecture and façade of the Academy Retroit building.

Ground Floor Plan

To view all floor plans please click here

Academy Retroit rejects the norm designs and concepts of prisons. The idea behind the design of this building is to make the individual/visitor feel claustrophobic and restricted upon arrival, like how one would feel in prisons. For this reason the main entrance has been designed to be a long, dull and narrow concrete passage at 35 meters high (Image 1). To add to this concept and to hold a sculptural element to the building, the main entrance holds the photography gallery with two narrow divisions separating this part of the building at 35 meters high (Image 2). Another tight and high path leads to the film gallery in the under ground (Image 3). An additional contribution to this concept is the placement of bars at 35 meters high with a distance of a meter from each other. This adds to the characteristics of the public square and increases the sense of interaction with the building (Image 4).

Once the individual has entered the building, they have two choices: either go through the main reception, which holds a voided sculptural staircase that leads to all floors at 35 meters high or alternatively go to the open and beautifully landscaped courtyard (Image 5). This design, therefore, acts in contrary to the traditional notion of how prisons should be constructed.