If architecture and confinement are both about definite physical boundaries, it is how we read these boundaries, these limitations, and how we interact with them, that is most telling of our position of power or lack thereof. Confinement is at its most oppressive when it is explicitly felt in the body. In an environment that one cannot, or feels one cannot, change, individuals often surrender the majority of their power – the ability to act – to those that are, or fell they are, entitled to initiate such revision. The confined communities are offered a choice, and a means of communication.
An ethnographic exercise is conducted across multiple confined communities: a blighted neighborhood, a halfway house, a federal prison. Local methods of adaptation to various stages of confinement (tagging, patterning, screening, etc.) are reconsidered through the lens of design and applied to the speculative reevaluation of a rehabilitation center for former inmates in Baltimore, MD. Foucaultian distinctions between “concentration” and “distraction” are blurred in an attempt to offer the confined curratorial opportunities, and, in so doing, a new level of control over their own lives.
Concept Sketch: The war-machine struggling against its co-optation by the state apparatus, a dance of order and chaos. An early study in drawing dynamic systems of control.
Layered domesticity, Facades and Screens:Layered Domesticity: On a site visit to Baltimore on the weekend of October 8 and 9, Mc— and the studio saw the city through two very different experiences: a day-long walking tour, modeled after a Situationist dérive, wandering through downtown and surrounding neighborhoods to wind up at our site; and a driven tour guided by a Baltimore police officer who works in East Baltimore. Despite the differences in the economic structures of the more affluent residential neighborhoods verses the low-income residential neighborhoods, the houses looked almost identical from the street – attached single family rowhouses, often with a passageway between every other house leading to the respective backyards, brick structure frequently holding up a formstone facade. Only by looking at the houses from the back, accessible via wide alleyways, can you see the rest of the house: in the blighted neighborhoods to the north, many of the wood-based structural systems were sagging, if not outright collapsing; roofs were caved in; weeds were beginning to grow into the building – what looked identical to the well-off neighborhoods around the harbor from the front could be clearly identified as a vacancy in the back. Like Ga—, many of these communities have a “facade reconstruction” program that allows the neighborhood as a whole to clean up the appearance of the area, though the Baltimore programs seem to benefit the residents very little. In addition to the brick / formstone facades that repeat across all economic spectrums, a commonality across all residential neighborhoods is the desire to construct a barrier to serve as a separation between street and home (this includes the construction of the facades themselves). This image shows the emphasis placed on this layered separation: the windows become templates with which to fill with stained glass, painted screens, shades, curtains, and knickknack novelty items.
During our walk, a woman noticed that two strangers were snapping pictures of her house and came out for an explanation. This explanation turned into a dialogue, and the Baltimore resident began to tell us more about the neighborhood, including the story of the screens. This tradition of “screening” for Baltimore’s many neighborhood began in Canton, the location of our site, when a man named William, a Czekoslovakian immigrant, painted his window screen, or so the story goes. Locals saw his painted screen and admired it, not only for its aesthetic value, but for the fact that it blocked views inside while allowing views out; it became a valued feature in the urban setting, creating privacy while not restricting the home’s owner view from their surrounding environment.
Man-as-machine vs. Man-as-beast: This image is a montage produced by the author to aid in the explanation of the Baltimore design project. Two typologies of prison design were identified historically (see note 14 on Foucault): the space of univied labor / distraction / man-as-machine; and the space of isolated silence / concentration / man-as-beast. The Baltimore design project intends to propose a third typology, one of “concentrated distraction,” or productive activity indicated by the individual, not by combining the two but by surgically extracting elements of each to recompose a Frankensteinian space that consumes the institution that gave it life.
Disorder of Perception, Screening the Omniscient Gaze: Diagram showing the conjugation of hierarchies, done for the Baltimore project, where, depending on one’s physical position in space, one’s role as the viewer or the viewed is a role of instability, constantly in question as one moves through the building. This concept of surveillance derives from Félix Guattari’s work at La Borde, involving individuals’ appropriation of different tasks (e.g. medical staff taking up material tasks like cleaning, patients put into positions of authority of organization – people doing things they wouldn’t normally in an effort to reinterpret one’s role in society): “This constant activity of calling things into question seems pointless and confusing in the eyes of an organizer-counsel, and yet it is through this activity alone that individual and collective assumptions of responsibility can be instituted, the only remedy to bureaucratic routine and passivity generated by traditional hierarchical systems.” Chaosophy, p. 176.
Process program diagram.
Building section.
Library and Circulation Labyrinth, Detailed Section: Cutting through the library programmatic zone, the section illustrates the give and take between programmed spaces (including but not limited to the dormitory, the gym, the administrative offices, etc.) and circulation spaces of transition, spaces in transition. The screens that oscillate between shrouding and exposing the paths are controlled indirectly by the occupants (some are controlled by the movement of seating within or near the paths, for example). The ribs provide the spatial framework for these areas, but also make up the vertical structure of the building.
Plan 1: Dining hall, kitchen, offices, visiting rooms, and gym space shown.
Plan 2: Dining hall, kitchen, lower library, administrative offices, visiting rooms, and gym space shown.
Plan 3: Upper and lower library rooms shown.
Plan 4: Upper library reading room and administrative office shown.
Plan 5: Dormitory and counseling rooms shown.
Plan 6: Roof plan.
Perspective Down from Hammock / Bed / Machine, in Dormitory Sleeping Chimney.
Digital Sketch of Halfway House Interior.
Partial study model.
Construction of Desk, Milling, Assembling, and Sanding. (Photos by client.)
Completed desk.
Assembly Diagram.
Completed desk.
A Brief Biographical Confession
I am very much a student of architecture, and while I don’t want to make this about architecture, there are two things that architects and architecture students just can’t restrain themselves from doing: one is talking about architecture, regardless of its irrelevance to the topic at hand; the other is attempting to fix things that they probably cannot fix.
I am very much a student of architecture and it makes me see the world in a particular way. With this project, the intent was, initially, to rediscover architecture through the eyes of its occupants, to step back from my on-going role as designer and allow certain problems, certain themes, to emerge from my observation of and interaction with communities either representative of or similar to those I would be designing for. The architectural forms that came out, I had hoped, would still be my own, but would more profoundly reflect my experiences with these potential occupants, and their own cultural fingerprints would start to shape the outcome of the project. Ultimately, as a designer, I am someone who must not only draw conclusions about the research I do but also propose how these conclusions are to be physically manifested, and, to take it a step further, how that physical implementation can become a reality. Trafficking in the indefinite and ambiguous fields of the possible, the potential, the prospective but never certain futures, architecture is a speculative existence. And it may contrast greatly with the methods of observation and participation rooted in ethnographic research, but, in combining the two, there is a way to bridge the gap between realities; not only does the familiar become strange, but an absolute real becomes a speculative alternative, a creative commentary on what is, but also on what could be. The ethnographic investigation, then, serves not only as supplement to an architectural exploration, but as a guide to it.
I am very much a student of architecture, even when I try not to be; it is through this confession of identity that this body of research should be read.
Introductions: Two Design Projects
Whether our attention is given out of intimidation or out of respect, we do our best to listen to what Fo—, Specific names are not important to the general interest of this study; partial names are used here only to make distinctions between various characters and events, and clarify roles within groups. This is not a journalistic piece, but an ethnographic study, with some self reflection regarding the complex social role of a designer. our professor, has to say. This is the case, too, when he reminds our class that we, as future architects, are “bound by a social contract to provide service to others,” that we must constantly “mediate the needs of both parties served: the client, and society,” two parties who, we are assured, “will never, almost never, agree on anything.” Similarly, dates and references are included to better define a timeline and to underscore opinions and positions. No quotes were recorded on a device, but were composed in shorthand at the time they were spoken. Fully cited quotes in this piece are only from sources not directly related to this study. This quote from lecture on October 18. We, as architects, are responsible. And he will not let us forget that. But, being students, we do forget, we forget all the time. We forget, in school, that responsibilities and restrictions exist in all aspects of our work; we forget that architecture is, first and foremost, about boundaries – most of which we have no control over, but which we must mitigate and mediate in turn. The course, Is—, navigates many of the intricacies of practice through a single, semester-long research project, the creation of “a guide to effect change in the Ga— Neighborhood [...] through thoughtful intervention in the physical environment.” From course syllabus issued on August 29.
The class is divided into sixteen groups, each assigned a specific initiative, proposed changes to the physical environment of Ga—, as identified by Ci—, the client.As defined by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), all conventional architect contracts involve three primes: the architect, who designs; the contractor, who builds; and the owner, who pays. As a student project, and one that may or may not be implemented in the future, there are no licensed architects and not yet a contract to define roles. The students are acting as “architect,” designing the project in such a way that allows it to be potentially built; upon implementation, an owner, which in this case would become either the neighborhood of Ga— or a developer, such as Ci—, acting on Ga—’s behalf, would be required to pay for this construction. Currently, though, Ci—’s involvement as client has been limited to an entity which supplies the students with their own demographic and environmental research, the overall programmatic requirements they see necessitated by this research, and constant feedback on the progressing designs of these projects. Our group consists of five fourth-year architecture students. All design, planning, and representation for this project was done in collaboration with my classmates. Our interactions with the community consist of both scheduled community meetings – with the rest of our class and a broader range of residents from the area and sometimes from bordering neighborhoods – as well as unscheduled walks through the lower portion of the neighborhood, during which we conduct personal interviews, distributed surveys, and generally try to engage neighbors in conversation.
Meanwhile, the fall semester of all fourth-year students partaking in such a degree as ours has traditionally been, and continues to be, dedicated to issues of occupancy. Though the program has evolved considerably over the last decade or so, we continue to ask questions about the give and take of occupancy’s role in design – how one designs for and around the users of the building – as well as design’s influence over occupancy – how people are influenced by, and subsequently react to, the built environment that surrounds them. The etymological background of “occupant” could itself provide a sort of meta-framework on control and territorial possession, as could the aforementioned struggle for power between occupant and building. The author would like to acknowledge this appropriate parallel but sees this underlying conflict as potential for a much more expansive research project. The studio maintains its investigation into the role of ethics in the act of designing for people. One of the four specialized studios this semester is run by Mc— of Ed—, local architecture firm, and focuses on inhabitants in urban settings, with a particular interest in transitional scenarios of living, culminating in the design of a neighborhood rehabilitation center in Baltimore, MD.
Two design prompts from this studio are relevant to the ethnographic research of this larger project. As a short assignment in preparation of the Baltimore project, the studio was divided into groups in order to design and construct a piece of furniture for an ex-offender who had recently completed their stay at the So—. This charrette-like exercise incorporated multiple client meetings with the ex-offenders throughout the design and construction processes, culminating in the delivery of the furniture piece to their new respective homes. To understand occupancy for the Baltimore design, as a studio, three major trips – to two Pittsburgh halfway houses and to the neighborhood of Ca— in Baltimore – which we took together as a studio, afforded us opportunities not only to interact with our very real occupants for our more-or-less fictive architectures, but to observe these communities in the context of their own physical environment. The Baltimore design project was executed individually by all students participating in this studio, though many of the tours and visits were done as a group.
The ethnographic element to this enterprise, then, consists of the documentation and compilation of these various interactions with “occupants”: in and around Ga—, in the space of two Pittsburgh halfway houses, and, to slightly lesser extent, in the Baltimore neighborhood of Ca—. When only two occupant groups are contrasted, as will occur throughout this essay, the two primary groups are: 1) the residents of Ga— and 2) the residents of both the Co— and Re—.
Introductions: Methods and Representation
My own training and experience in interpreting space and representation of place play a vital role in my ability to quickly observe the quantitative and qualitative attributes of various environments. The restrictions I set for myself early in this process were to use only pen and paper in my documentation on-site – a self-imposed rule broken once, in Baltimore – and to attempt to engage those with whom I interacted in the act of drawing as well, in an effort to construct a more fluid transition between occupant and designer, or even between observer and observed.
The original intent was to keep three distinct traveling sketchbooks/notebooks to be compiled together afterwards: one for my own “fieldnotes” recorded through both sketches and words the environments I suspected I would encounter over the course of the project, including “scratchnotes” from conversations, interviews, and direct observation; the second was intended to be for those I would interact with, to incorporate an alternative way for them to represent their own understanding of their surroundings through drawing or diagramming various spaces; a third would be used for notes off-site, including responses from my experiences as well as parallel readings and research.
This organized three-part system soon disintegrated entirely. The first book, with fieldnotes, dissolved into my other main sketchbook, as my recordings of observed environments became increasingly difficult to separate from the fictional environments I was designing. The logistics of the second book were similarly complicated for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to constraints of time, access, and privacy – my time spent with individuals was quite limited, and it was often a major effort just to get them to verbally describe something, a communication format they were familiar with, that to encourage them to draw out a space or experience was too much. Because of the sometimes delicate situations of my attempted interactions with certain individuals, ex-offenders in particular, my access to a sort of one-on-one scenario was restricted. This second book, then, became replaced by a variety of interactions involving give-and-take, where I would, or my group and I would together, use what we had heard to come up with a design, then represent it, then receive feedback. In at least one instance, the feedback was quite similar to the intent of this second book: during the community meeting held in Ga—, for instance, many large print-outs of a map of Ga— were laid out on tables with numerous markers and residents were encouraged to draw / diagram / write on the map directly. The fact that many residents were participating at the same time and by eliminating the often intimidating blankness of an empty page, many individuals were willing to engage in the act of drawing under this much more social condition. The third book then became subsumed by my computer and typed notes, where it became easier for me to quickly reorganize my thoughts and research digitally.
What eventually condensed down to organized chaos resulted in similar representational techniques used in both my written work, in the form of this ethnographic study, as well as my visual work produced for the Baltimore design project. Both use, to a greater and lesser extent, collage as a way to come to terms with the disparate parts of the research and the design. Not quite yet montage – in which separate pieces are recomposed to form a new whole – the collage allows the fragments to remain fragments, though they are pasted together, and they may be read either independently or as a group, but still not exactly collective in the message they convey. It questions the part-to-whole relationship often taken for granted in architectural theory. It offers not just one, but multiple understandings of the material at hand.
Confinement and Other Definitions
Beside the intense studies of specific occupant groups that both of these projects require, the common thread between them is the design for a confined community. In the case of the design for a Co—, the implications of this may be obvious: though the residents of such an establishment are considerably less restrained than those detained in higher security prisons, there are still lists of regulations that must be followed regarding the operations of the facility, and the physical confinement of persons, their possessions, their appearance, etc. This confined community, in Pittsburgh case studies for the Baltimore project, consists of ex-offenders who are working towards reentry into society, still confined by the Co—’s imposed restrictions but with the hope of a more liberated near future. In the case of Ga—, though there are decades between where we stand now and the collapse of the steel industry, it is one of Pittsburgh’s many neighborhoods still feeling the effects of this history, where population decline has led to a high concentration of vacancies and neglect. Ga— has been targeted by Ci—’s Si— Study Many seeming assumptions about Ga—’s economic and social setting come out of this extensive research. – the prefatory research done to initiate the project undertaken by the Is— class – as one such neighborhood. Many residents of Ga— are unable to leave, regardless of job opportunities elsewhere, regardless of the threat of violence just beyond their front porches; economically, socially, and culturally, they are trapped.
We can look at confinement as a kind of gathering of all limits, From the Latin confinis: con- “together” and finis “end, limit, territory.” This and all other definitions stemming from etymological origins can be found in the New Oxford American Dictionary. a definition of territory through borders, spatial inscription of ownership and meaning. In many instances of architectural intervention, confinement is an act of will, a deliberate demarcation of one’s space (or spaces). In an interview with Craig Dykers, principal and founder of international architecture firm Snøhetta (April 18, conducted by author with Matthew Huber), the architect attempted to summarize the complex relationship between architecture and territoriality: “As human beings, we tend to gravitate towards ownership, whether it’s about owning our thoughts or owning acquired property. Architecture often creates space that is all about acquiring property of some kind. I find that a challenge, because I think the notion of ownership has grown more powerful throughout time. The definition of what we call space has become privatized in our minds. I think that’s a problem.” But sometimes confinement is obligatory, imposed upon an individual or a community by other external forces.
Both Ga— and the Co— are complicated examples of this “obligatory” confinement. Neither is completely obligatory: of course, many residents of Ga— not only want to live there, but care very much about their community and about the neighborhood itself – an important find in the Si— Study was that residents were very concerned with Ga— maintaining its own identity, that, regardless of interventions, economic opportunities, renovations implemented, Ga— would remain Ga—; in some cases, participation in the Co— is also a choice – a place to parole for individuals without a better or more stable option to go – and is required for others, though, for either, mandatory regulations and physical confinement are not as limiting as other stages in the system of corrections, most halfway-houses permitting leave for work, for family visits, etc. Despite these complicated relationships with their respective environments of confinement, for most individuals for most of the time, confinement, broadly defined, is a major theme in their daily lives.
The definition of communities “with limits” is troublesome, then, especially with this complication of obligation or lack thereof, and its ambiguity allows one to make the argument that all communities are confined, in some sense. The consistency of a definite static physical boundary (during the five months of this study), though, plays an extensive role in the communities. These limits are physical thresholds that are visible, known, and openly discussed: to cross these thresholds is a psychological as well as physical transition. The two parallel “unconfined” communities for the halfway house and for the blighted post-industrial neighborhood would likely be defined as: release from the correctional system for the first, and movement to an economically-stimulated neighborhood with more amenities and opportunities for the second. However, this study also seeks to challenge these assumption by looking at how the confined can be freed of these limits internally, rather than just leaving and disregarding the area of confinement.
It is the physical qualities defining confinement that are the focus of this study: the definite physical boundaries, recognizable to both members of the community and to outsiders, and the role of individual choice in how one engages with their physical environment. The physicality of these traits in both Ga— and the halfway houses enables the study of and the comparison between these two quite different communities.
Confinement is closely associated with security and order. Both of Latin origins, the word “security” comes to us from se- “without” and cura “care,” while “order” comes from the prefix ordin- meaning “row, series, rank.” The first suggests that the ideal form of security is one that instills sentiments of a worry-free atmosphere, where perhaps security is absent from view, and from the mind. This definition at first seems to contradict typical relationships between inmates and Department of Corrections (DOC) administration, where the visibility of security – whether it is a camera or a guard – is often perceived as another layer of security as it serves as a constant reminder, and maybe threat, that one is always being watched; but there are also certain situations where this invisible, or indeterminate, security may prove a more effective strategy of control. Order is not only connected to the aforementioned relationships between the guard and the guarded, but is also explicitly linked to the internal order of a group itself, the evolving social structure and hierarchy of relationships formed through interaction, choice, necessity, or mandated externally. Both security and order also have this inherent investment in the physical, in the body.
Through this study, an additional theme has emerged. Power is a hierarchical enablement of activity and influence. Power emerges in various forms in these communities, but the physical mediator between powers most often takes the form of distractions. These distractions, as hiccups in the normalcy of a restricted way of life, are small doses of activity, drawing attention away from primary awareness. Further sub-classifications of “distraction” will be identified and elaborated upon in this study, the main categories being “absent distractions,” “placeholder distractions,” and “designed distractions.” Positive challenges to perception – both physical and mental operations that heighten awareness to the established patterns of activity and provoke critique of how one either engages or disengages from that routine – distractions have been found to ease tension in a confined environment. By providing an outlet for mental or physical activity, the distraction becomes the necessary supplement to order. Distraction satisfies the authoritative power’s need to control and limit, as well as providing certain liberties to the confined community. On the surface, it appears to be a positive phenomenon for all parties involved. But these distractions are much more elaborately entwined into the structure of these communities, exposing underlying anatomies of power and influence, and provide a point of comparison with surrounding unconfined communities.
Perhaps most importantly, these distractions are a tangible way of understanding power relations within a confined community. They are easily called out from activities of a community, and are often identified by community members themselves. This ethnographic study, upon the realization that these distractions could lead to a deeper understanding of the community’s social structure as a whole, began to track these distractions and look more closely at correlations between them and the hierarchies of power with influence over the communities.
Rejection of the idle and the persistent obsession with keeping busy, as an internalized methodology for confinement, for reforming the confined or for dealing with confinement may ultimately be a response to contemporary American social interaction and consumer culture; removed from the immediate realities of our existence, through communication with others, through business transactions, though knowledge production and dissemination, our lives consist of secondary and tertiary disconnections from our absolute physical, and social, environment. These distractions, then, in this unintentional way, really do prepare the confined for life outside / beyond their area of confinement; in fact, often over-prepared for reengaging in this socio-economic system, the confined then find it appealingly easily to return to the same lifestyle that existed in tense relation to social norms, once instructed in the art of busyness. The lack of individual goals and purposefulness denies all participants departure from the cyclical infrastructure of confinement: distraction then becomes a way out of, but also a way back into, confinement. Many of the concepts mentioned in this essay draw from the extensive work done by Michel Foucault in his Discipline and Punishment: the Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979). Though he is cited when quoted directly, it should also be noted that this work in particular has had a large impact on the development of my theoretical frameworks. More recent critiques of Foucault, including an article by C. Fred Alford, point out the lack of validity in Foucault’s claims in regards to contemporary practice of correctional facilities, that “the empirical reality of prison” underscores the now 30-year-old theories of Foucault. Alford, “What Would it Matter if Everything Foucault Said about Prison Were Wrong?” Theory and Society, 29, no. 1 (February 2000): 125-146. Keeping this in mind, this study of confined communities moves forward with Foucault’s book as a jumping-off point, but not as stable ground to stand on: the theoretical can become problematic when imposed upon an existing reality, but can remain useful nonetheless as a framework from which we interpret and represent that reality.
Absent Distractions
“I’m a big believer, personally, in certain comforts: AC, television, game systems are all great; it keeps people happy. But no personal computers or cell phones. No Facebook or anything like that is allowed in here.” Mi—, director of this Co— for eight years, slides these institutional restrictions between self-congratulated benevolence. Unless otherwise noted, quotes sited in the Co— come from fieldnotes taken during tour of the facilities on October 5. “A lot of people in Corrections think I’m crazy for letting these boys have Nintendo and whathaveyou, but they really like it, and Nintendo’s not going to get someone in trouble. Compared to jail, this place isn’t bad at all, is it?” His question is directed at a pair of residents, previously unnoticed by our group, watching television from behind one of the wardrobes, sitting on opposite beds, both wearing pajama bottoms. Pa—, one of the two residents, wearing his pajama bottoms inside-out, laughs in response. “Not at all, sir.” Neither looks up from the screen at the group of students gawking at them, huddled together on the other side of the room.
Mi— is leading a tour for Mc— and the studio to give us exposure to a functioning community correctional center. A few of the students have been to or seen a halfway house before, but no one, including Mc—, has experienced such an intimate look at the workings of such a facility and the living conditions of the residents inside. It is the end of a long week for the studio and most students are caught yawning at some point along the tour. They are interested, but there is a level of extreme normalcy in what we see. The residents chuckle to themselves as we tour the bathroom, Similar responses occurred during the tour of Re—, Inc., another Co— in Pittsburgh, located adjacent to the Allegeny County Jail, on November 4: a group of residents were waiting in the hallway as we toured the restrooms, and one shouted to us, “Have you guys never seen a toilet before?” Mc— tried to explain to them that we were architecture students, to which the resident replied again, “It’s a pretty normal bathroom. I’ve seen ’em other places, too.” The rest of the group then proceeded to burst out laughing. It is apparently not a normal occurrence for a group of strangers to come in and tour their bathroom for an extended period of time. students furiously sketching floorplans and jotting down notes. We all realize on some level the absurdity of our fascination with what appears to be a fairly mundane setting, in an unextraordinary building with nothing architecturally interesting, at least, to captivate our attention.
There are a few things, though, that interest the group in particular, and a lot of it is prompted by Mi—’s oral narrative along the tour. The first distraction noticed here is the distraction – or group of distractions – absent from this particular environment. The absence of these items was noticed by the group; the classification of “distractions” was initiated by the author. The “group” consists of our studio of fourth-year architecture students. Any work expressed in this project that was done in collaboration with any of these other students will be noted. No cell phones, no computers. Shocking to a dozen 20-somethings, for the half-second before we reconsider and rationalize reasons for safety and control in what is, after all, a correctional facility. We can’t help the initial impulsive reaction of amazement: American society has thrived on a culture of distraction. Possessed by the rapture of consumerism and the immediacy in availability of information, we are becoming increasingly anesthetized to our surroundings. So, at least in this regard, the ex-offenders have an edge: the unavailability of certain distractions could offer a degree of emancipation from the looming cloud of capitalism that cultural critics have been urging us to clear out for over a century. A restriction or liberation?
According to Mc—, the lack of personal communication devices allows greater control over the residents’ communication with people outside of the facility. It has the potential, also, to bring the residents closer together as a community sharing an environment and most resources, by encouraging direct (physical, real, etc.) communication between them. However, judging by the relatively few residents engaged in activities involving either cooperation or competition – they coexist in the same space, often playing the same games or watching the same show, but rarely acknowledge each other – it is easy to speculate that this is not seen as having any effect, positive or negative, on the structure of the group. The smoking room Mi— informs us that approximately 80% of the residents smoke; as there are no games out and the pool table was empty, it seemed that the primary use of the room was to have a place for residents to have a smoke. During our brief stay in the room during the tour, there were three residents also in the room, sitting or standing along the edges of the room, either smoking or about to; the two smoking had different length cigarettes, suggesting the three of them had entered the room at separate times and not as a group. It seemed unlikely they would be participating in any recreational activities for the time being. / gameroom The close quarters and limited personal space do the same thing – encourage direct communication – but also, one suspects, makes residents avoid contact altogether.
Many residents of Ga— experience a similar absence of these technocratic communicative distractions. The first community meeting held for the project results in the attendance of all 70 students, and a little less than 20 community members. Ev—, of Ci—, spends close to half an hour explaining how an outsourced communications company contacted the community (for Ci—), but community members who had, by some small miracle, heard about the meeting, were insistent: “People don’t have computers, so they don’t get e-blasts. People don’t have smartphones, so they can’t follow your twitter thing. People don’t have time to read the whole newspaper. These won’t work.” There was a question-and-answer session following the main presentation during the first community meeting with Ga—, which took place on September 7. Many of the residents expressed their disappointment that so few members of the community attended, most clearly expressed and summarized in this quote by one resident. Again, this and all other notes were record by hand during the event. Though this resident, Me—, was unable to pinpoint what would be successful in the future as a communicative device, others, including De—, were direct. Shortly after the first community meeting, the five of us took it upon ourselves to get more in-depth feedback from the community, specifically the residents on Street. I composed a questionnaire for residents who were not home, and orchestrated a series of informal interviews with residents who were home. The group of five split into a group of two and a group of three, each accompanied by a Ga— resident who had volunteered to introduce us to other members of the community. This response came out of this series of interviews on September 14. Sitting on her front stoop, rocking her infant, giggling granddaughter, she shouts at the teenagers a little way down the street to quit making so much noise, and then turns back to us:
They don’t mean no harm; they just need someone to tell them what to do every once in a while. Can’t feel threatened at them, they have to know you mean it when you tell them they better stop horsing around. Anyway, you want to know how to tell people something? Flyers, these sorts of things [picks up bright yellow paper with an advertisement for a bake sale], and word of mouth. That’s really all you can do. A lot of folks have phones, cell phones, but most don’t use them much. A few people have computers, not too many on this street though.
This typological category of distraction, the personal communication device, is held in high regard by many but has also been criticized; it allows for alternative methods of communication, methods that do not require participants to exist in the same locative and temporal domain – it frees us from the constraints of real space-time restrictions but chains us to the technology that allows us to do so. Its absence in certain environments has necessitated alternative methods of communication and alternative strategies for distraction. Both confined communities shown here rely heavily upon word of mouth for internal communication, which demands close, physical interaction. And this kind of closeness is something Mi— values in his facility:
In an interpersonal control model, like this, there’s no real need for any more than this security [waves his arms around to mean this place of the Co—], and it would be physically impossible for this facility anyway. The way we operate things depends on a united management model, with [administrative] decision makers in close proximity to inmates. With managers’ offices within 20 feet of where the residents live, [the managers] know when things come up. Small issues can be dealt with early before they really blow up; if something that could be a potential issue, we can talk it out together and prevent escalation of that problem.
The closeness of residents to each other is also something both Mi— and Ad—, the Program Manager at Re—, use to their advantage for security reasons: both can easily check in on the entire group of residents at once. Documentation comparing facilities that separate inmates into cells from those that keep all inmates in the same large dormitory space is inconsistent and unreliable: personal preference and the fluctuation of numerous other environmental factors play too large of a role in such studies. The exceptionally vague conclusion of such studies shows that most inmates “prefer companionship” but only if balanced with a level of “socially acceptable [...] privacy or dignity.” Such studies are referred to in Leslie Fairweather, “Psychological Effects of the Prison Environment,” in Prison Architecture: Policy, Design and Experience, ed. by Leslie Fairweather and Seán (Boston: Architectural Press, 2000), p. 38. In the case of these two halfway houses, the closeness occasionally causes conflict between residents of the facilities. As Ad— explains to us during our tour of Re—, “If you think about how many times you and your roommate bicker about making noise, having lights on, cleaning up your apartment, just imagine what it’s like to have 15 roommates, none of which you chose to live with.” But they do look after each other and become a sort of community, learning to live with the group. See section “Spare Change.” This camaraderie is encouraged and sometimes forced, using social networks between residents to modify behavior. Re— uses a point system to encourage good behavior among their resident population. This point system is a key example of this social manipulation in two ways: first, the visibility of the points, on a dry erase board with everyone’s name listed besides the number of points they have earned, means there is never a question about who is in favor with the administration, never a question about who is closest to earning points to get telephone minutes or a number of similar incentives; second, the person with the most points, or the biggest improvement, gets to choose the movie they show that week – however, regardless of that choice, the movie will be withheld until everyone cleans up all of the spaces on that floor, Re— is programmed by floor, so as to separate inmates with special needs (for example, drug-abuse therapy) or inmates of special populations (there is a floor which houses only women), with the bottom floors devoted to programs all groups will use, according to a pre-set schedule (including a computer room, a gym, etc.). to get everyone to work towards a common goal.
For the neighborhood of Ga—, the implications of this necessary closeness are that the community members, though they might not know every single one of their neighbors, they are able to recognize who is and is not part of their community. As demonstrated at community meetings, when community members quickly identified the majority of those in attendance as outsiders – the students. It also means that they have a very secure perception about what characterizes Ga— and what sets it apart from its bordering neighborhoods. This did not come up very often during our own interaction with the community, but was conveyed to the students in the Si— Study. Residents of Ga— recognize that there are problems in the neighborhood that need to be resolved in order to ensure the safety of their families and to create an economically sustainable region for the community, but are greatly concerned that Ga— could change too much, or become too alike some adjacent neighborhood Much of the Si— Study makes comparisons between the two neighborhoods, and subtly mentions goals such as “blurring the line.” While we, as students, have tried to remain hopeful that this project is operating under the best of intentions – that this will ultimately not turn into a neatly packaged exercise of gentrification – many students have had a difficult time accepting Ci—, a developer, as our client. Again, it comes down to the very real balancing act of responsibilities to both the client and to society. There are certain projects in which our client’s interests seem to be divergent from those of the community. At the end of the day, the community is just that, a community, a collective of people sharing some cultural understanding and sharing their physical environment.
Spare Change
Although confinement is defined by physical boundaries, it is also bound to rules imposed upon that physical space. These sets of rules determine use of and interaction with the space of confinement, establishing administrative control over the physical environment. In these rules, it is common for the authoritative powers to assume that if something can be physically manipulated, it will be. This is especially true if that modification is typical of unconfined situations, though this is exacerbated by confinement (e.g. the ability to adjust blinds or move a chair is taken for granted in an unrestricted environment). Fairweather begins to hint at this in her essay on the psychological implications of prison design:
There are two particular frustrations felt by inmates: lack of freedom of movement, and the inability to manipulate important aspects of their immediate environment. [...] If inmates are kept waiting too long for action by officers, frustration sets in, leading to aggression and violence. Another cause of frustration is the inability of prisoners to control their own personal environment, to regulate the airflow and temperature, or to turn off the radio or light in their cell. This may lead to attacks on the offending source. Staff are often dissatisfied with their own inability individually to regulate temperature and fresh air.
Fairweather, p. 45. These rules are not only spoken, but in some cases, physically manifested in the form of signage. At the Co—, white paper signs declare and command in all caps, Times New Roman size 24: “RESIDENTS NO TAMPERING WITH BLINDS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES,” “NO SLEEPING IN THIS ROOM,” “DID YOU PUSH IN YOUR CHAIR???” “KEEP DOOR CLOSED TO ROOM AT ALL TIMES,” etc. These signs appear in every room of the Co—, often duplicated on multiple walls or windows where one sign just wouldn’t be enough. At both the Co— and Re—, two binders of the official resident handbook, containing all regulations residents must follow, are present in the hallways of each floor. There is, of course, other signage found in both halfway houses. The majority of the posters and flyers in public spaces (see also section “Placeholder Distractions”) of the Co— were directed to either encourage job searches or to emphasize the importance of reporting any violence witnessed in the facility. These were also very prevalent at Re—, but there were also many general motivational posters – a lot of mountainscapes, natural scenes with generic inspirational quotes, were visible as we moved along the tour – and images of peaceful role models – the faces of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. stared back at us on almost every wall. With this collection of signage types, almost no wall is left bare in either halfway house; each carries some semiotic weight to whoever passes through the halls.
Perhaps the strongest sign of all is the window. The Co— and Re— both restrict residents from operating the blinds: they are left shut so that residents cannot “signal” to civilians on the sidewalk below or to drivers passing by. Ad— and Mi— both site examples of residents signaling to friends, which often resulted in a new way for them to bring contraband into the facility. Mi— tells the story of one man who had created a complex set of hand signals to communicate with his friend below in order to indicate what kind of alcoholic beverage he wanted, and his friend would return later to deliver; the pair used one of the milk crates and a rope constructed out of ripped bed-sheets to lower and raise the bottled beverage. As complicated as the system was, it didn’t last long before the administrators at the Co— smelled alcohol and realized what was going on. This, and similar stories, explain the authorities’ need to keep the shades closed at all times, regardless of lightness or temperature of the room.
Despite this, Ad— informs us, as if we cannot see the sunlight streaming through the windows of the recreation room for ourselves, they often break their own rules. The administration at Re— allows the blinds to remain open most of the time, because, they explain, it is highly unlikely the residents will have anyone to sign to either below (in the restricted-access parking lot) or across (to the county jail, as both buildings have heavily tinted glass). Tolerance is also encouraged by the literally captivating view of the prison just a parking lot away. Seeing the prison is a constant reminder of how easy it would be for them to return. “And no one wants to go back; no one wants anyone else to go back. This is not always the case. Ad— gives us some examples where, in situations where one resident is causing a lot of trouble, others quickly grow tired of both putting up with the disturbance and with the reprimands made to everyone, and will point out the trouble-maker to the administrators. Ad— assures us, though, that these exceptions are not frequent: “They don’t have to be close, necessarily. They just don’t like to see anyone have to go back there.” We think it’s [more] helpful to have that reminder to reinforce what happens to residents who try to take advantage of the freedoms they are offered here.”
These signs, and residents’ responses to them, suggests that residents have almost no control, even no control through interpretation, of the space they physically occupy. Yes, there are times when residents do not follow the rules, but in such a limited space with so many eyes watching and with minimal workable material to begin with, these co-optations are infrequent and fleeting. No one bothers to sit in a chair “inappropriately” Specific guidelines of conduct are listed in resident handbooks. ; the residents who attempt to signal something to people outside their window – which would require one to “tamper with blinds” – are caught almost immediately; the doors are heavy and close automatically As displayed on the tour of the Co—, when doors constantly broke the tour in half by closing automatically. The doors to the stairway at Re— are similarly weighted – in fact, they lock automatically as well, and are designed to take over a hundred pounds of force on their hinges. – in all of these situations, extra exertion of action is required. The passive prisoner is preferred. These signs are but reminders that, in the end, the physical environment can be a distraction, and an unwelcome one to those trying to preserve certain hierarchies of authority.
With the exception of a few notices of vacancy, some tattered “For Sale” signs, and some more that read “Private Property Do Not Enter,” the actual signage in Ga— is quite limited. There are street signs, of course, but no sign for the neighborhood. Instead, what gets read by those who wander into the community are the more material signs of vacancy and neglect that have taken over many of the lots, particularly in the roads right off of commercial Avenue. Residents have expressed the desire to “do something with all that space,” but do not have any specific vision in mind. They do not feel responsible for or any ownership over these vacant properties and vacant buildings, even if they live directly adjacent to the lot or share a party-wall with the structure. As one resident tells us, when questioned if he would permit a market to be held in the lot besides his home, “It’s not my house, so why should I care? It’s just not my place. Not my place to have a market, not my place to tell you you can or can’t put one there.” He shuffles from his door, across his front porch to get a closer look at the forest of weeds consuming the fallen fence on the property. He squints, and then says again, “No, it’s just not my place. If it was, though, I’d let you have it.” From the September 14 tour.
People do react, but it is not always from within the community; in fact, it is usually not the residents of Ga— who initiate these changes at all, but other Pittsburghers looking to help. Shortly after interviewing one resident of Ga—, See conversation with Ke— in “Placeholder Distractions.” The conversation following grew to involve an additional six or so people; people were constantly coming into Ni—’s gallery space, and Ni— encouraged almost everyone to sit down with us. Many were residents of Ga— or of surrounding neighborhoods; all were familiar with Ga—’s issues with gang violence and problems with vacancies, etc., and all seemed eager to talk with us. the Street Market group sat down with Mg— and Mn—, both involved in different organizations that were in the process of “helping Ga—.” According to Mn—, who was also a resident of Ga— though had not lived there more than a year, one of the most troubling aspects of the neighborhood was its vacancy rate, “and vacancies hit us really hard.” But, as Mg— and Mn— were both quick to tell us, there were lots of organizations out there trying to fill in those “missing teeth” with something optimistic. Two Pittsburgh-based organizations, Gr— and the eG—, both recently started to give back to the city in green, sustainable ways. Mg— picks up from Mn—’s narrative to talk about her own project: the sunflower gardens, one of Gr—’s major strategies for reclaiming vacant land. Her story concludes with the harvest of the sunflower garden, which will happen the following weekend, which she assures us does not mean the end of Gr—’s involvement – there is talk of turning it into a community garden in the spring. Mn— jumps back in – everyone is talking very quickly, and louder now that the gallery space we are sitting in is filling with other people as well – to talk about the Green + Screen project of the eG—; it is a similar project, she says, located on Avenue, to, exactly as it sounds, “green” these vacant lots by filling them will plantings, and “screen” them by creating a backdrop / signage that presents Avenue as a more cohesive arts corridor, despite, or perhaps with the help of, these vacancies and the installations that fill them.
Controlling Change
Who sees a need to change and who actually initiates that change begins to reveal certain qualities about these communities. In the case of the halfway house, where the residents’ lives are ruled by restrictions set to their physical environment, the residents exercise relatively little control and initiate relatively few rebellions against the existing infrastructure. They react to their environment, of course, as seen with the example of the windows looking out over the county jail, but their reactions are behavioral, internalized; they do not react with the environment. The few times they do exert agency and manipulate their environment in an unapproved way, they are punished: in most cases in the halfway house, they sent directly back to jail. In Ga—, signs of vacancy and neglect do not necessarily impose rules upon the community members, but these signs do begin to necessitate the drawing of territorial borders, what is mine and what is not, what is the community’s and what is not. These notions of ownership and territory impact who feels the right to engage these vacant spaces, who feels as though they have the power to make a change. For another example of how social structure can be read in the symbolic nature of physical objects, the power in arrangement and rearrangement of these objects, and in who can and cannot make modifications to the physical environment, see Loïc Wacquant, Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 36-37.
Power is an enabler of activity, and it is those who feel they are unable to act that find themselves powerless not only over their environment, but over their own future. Again and again, the members of these two communities are discouraged from either seeking out change or questioning convention; to question convention is to question authority. “The concern of the State is to conserve,” write Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology: The War Machine,” in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp. 351. This is true for most in a position of power – to hold fast the conventions and values that got you to that position of power is to secure your own place at the top of the hierarchical ordering of power.
The Order of Hierarchies, The Security of the Gaze
Let’s look at the halfway house first for the purpose of revisiting what order means to a confined community. The preset regulations of interaction and the constant present of administrative staff means that the hierarchies determined by authorities become more or less inherited by the residents.
We first meet Da— Our group of students met once with our client prior to designing to determine what the furniture should be, what it should look like, etc. and we maintained contact with Da— via email during the design process. He came to meet with us during the initial construction of the desk, documenting the finishing process on campus. He met with us again for our review with our professor, during which time a few suggestions were made (for example, the addition of wheels to aid in the movement of the heavy piece). After these final requests were made, and the desk finely sanded and finished a second time, it was delivered to Da—’s new apartment. Though the entire process lasted about three weeks, from meeting the client to delivery, we got to know Da— very well. He never spoke directly about his time at the Co—, but would speak, in a very humbled and gracious manner, about how thankful he was for the opportunities they gave him, and occasionally referred to the conditions of the facility in comparison to his living conditions now (the apartment he currently lives in is in part paid by him, but with supplementary rent paid by the Co—; although other ex-offenders do live in the building, it is a typical apartment building in Pittsburgh, and anyone who can afford it can live there). after waiting for 20 minutes in what is called the ballroom, a sort of conference meeting space for staff, a bizarre space with an unreasonably high ceiling and bright turquoise trim all around. During our wait, some of the administrative and counseling staff tell us a bit about our client: “He’s a real role model,” one says. “He’s really turned his life back around quickly; it’s good for the current residents to see him doing so well.” Upon our introduction, we realize quickly that he is not a typical resident. Unlike the sweatpants and tee-shirt combination sported by the majority of the residents at the halfway house, he is wearing a camel-colored blazer and dark jeans, and a beret-like cap, which he removes as he steps inside. And, of course, his camera bag, which doesn’t leave his shoulder even as he sits down. But it isn’t just his clothes, rather the way he is wearing them. He appears quiet, calm, but confident.
From what he tells us, it sounds as though photography and video were what kept his mind off of the Co—, and allowed him to set personal goals for himself upon his release. “I work at a gym around here part time, a job they helped me get here [at the Co—], but most of what I do, what I consider to be my real work, is photography and film, freelance. I do documentaries, music videos, commercials, portraits, action photographs, weddings – I do everything. It’s who I am.” With an interest in photography from an early age, and receiving formal training about ten years ago, he has built his career around the camera. His passion for his work is something not just Da— himself tells us about, but something the counselors mention to us while we wait. Current residents who know who he is Though no longer a resident himself, Da— does come back to visit and help out. wave or nod in his direction.
Part of the reason so many residents act so favorably towards Da— – although, to be fair, he is also just an exceptionally amicable person if our interactions with him are telling – is that those in the favor of the administration can pass on benefits to other residents who support or help them in some way. Exchanges of favors are common in all sorts of communities, but are a technique for survival in positions of confinement. To be in favor with the staff is to benefit from various incentives the authority might offer, incentives that sometimes extend even beyond one’s stay at the halfway house. This reward system See also information about Re—’s point system for behavior, in “Absent Distractions.” maintains order between residents and administration of the facility, as well as amongst the residents, because it imposes this hierarchical social system based on who has access to certain amenities.
Those not in favor with the authorities have the potential to compromise the whole group, in some instances. Re— has a major design flaw in their dormitory spaces: drop ceilings, which allow residents to hide objects very easily while keeping these things accessible. With a suddenly delighted expression indicating a sense of accomplishment, Ad— announces excitedly that he has finally thought of something architectural to comment on, and points out the shortcomings of the ceiling design immediately. “We’ve found everything up there, from cell phones to drug needles... once we found a bucket of chicken wings. They were old and it smelled nasty up there [in the ceiling].” Ad— wrinkles his nose in disgust. “But whenever we find something up there, we punish the entire room in the hopes that someone will speak up. Usually, it’s someone who’s been causing trouble a lot lately and the boys they’re living with get fed up – they’ll turn him in if that’s the case.” Unlike the Co—, Re—’s dorm rooms seem much emptier; all personal items, with the exception of an alarm clock and some photographs, must be stored either in the wardrobes – one assigned to each individual – or under the bed – for shoes. There isn’t really anywhere to hide contraband, except, apparently, the ceiling.
For Ga—, order can be found in the segmentation of the neighborhood into different zones. These divisions are seen and understood by both outsiders and residents, but are not necessarily hierarchical by either of these groups’ standards. The distinction was made most clearly in the Bl— 2030 Plan, Unpublished at the time of writing. as the Hill and the Edge. The names themselves are somewhat applied, but the distinction is made by residents as well, though they tend to reference between the two as “up there” or “down there” accordingly. Defined by topographic, functional, and density levels, the differentiation between the two has been heightened recently by new affordable housing developments occurring on the Hill. The Edge, Ci— claims, sometimes adopts characteristics from bordering communities, but also maintains some of the same characteristics as the Hill; residents make it clear that they do not feel as though they belong to any other community. Despite the fact that Avenue is so close to the Edge of Ga—, residents feel as though they have lost Avenue, that they no longer have any ownership over what happens on that street. Although many appreciate what Avenue has done to turn around its identity into an arts corridor, and has turned over many vacant buildings, generally enhanced the area overall, it has also now become its own entity, and no longer belongs to Ga—’s community. Ni—, Mn—, and Ke— all attempted to persuade our Street Market group that the market would do much better if it were held on Avenue. But the residents we spoke with told us a different story; one resident, answering through her front door barely cracked open wide enough for us to hear her, said, “Just don’t put it down by Avenue, or none of us will ever get to use it. The pretty white ladies from the suburbs will come down, like they do for the arts events, but then they’ll leave, and the market will leave and we’ll still be here without any groceries.” These internal boundaries are much more open for interpretation; things can change, and do, unlike the hierarchical system of the halfway house, and they are in the process of changing still – parts of the Edge include what Ci— has defined as the Zone, an area to be redeveloped into a commercial and creative hotbed, not an extension of Avenue but a region within Ga— as part of Ga—.
Power in Natural and Synthetic Systems
An analysis of different systems of order offers a critical comparison between the two case studies, one a halfway house, the other a neighborhood. Though power struggles may arise at times in both, the one is a hierarchical system of relations between the members of the group that has been predetermined and remains more or less fixed, i.e. the administrator and counseling members of the staff are “in control” of the inmate population. In the case of the neighborhood, however, the system is much more open and dynamic. These differences are in part due to the varying scales of the two examples, but also in part to their institutionalization or lack thereof – one is designed, internally established, while the other is emergent, un-designed and dynamic.
The gaze, as we find in Foucault, is an act of dehumanization through the disassociation of the body from the person, Not to be confused with the Lacanian use of “the gaze” in psychoanalysis, which suggests a state of anxiety brought on by the realization that the person in question is being objectified; our concern with “the gaze” is more closely related with the role it plays in power relationships. introducing the physical presence of the body as an object of power, one that could be manipulated and exploited. Through one’s capacity to view, and to analyze, control through surveillance emerges as a power relationship. In Foucault’s words:
Medical rationality plunges into the marvelous density of perception, offering the grain of things as the first face of truth, with their colours, their spots, their hardness, their adherence. The breadth of the experiment seems to be identified with the domain of the careful gaze, and of an empirical vigilance receptive only to the evidence of visible contents. The eye becomes the depositary and source of clarity; it has the power to bring a truth to light that it receives only to the extent that it has brought it to light; as it opens, the eye first opens the truth.
The prison [...] is also the place of observation of punished individuals. This takes two forms: Surveillance, of course, but also knowledge of each inmate, of his behavior, his deeper states of mind, his gradual improvement; the prisons must be conceived as places for the formation of clinical knowledge about the convicts...
Michel Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), p. xiii. Second quote from Foucault, Discipline and Punishment, p. 249. Critiques of Foucault, including Alford, suggest the opposite may be true in practice: “Real power means not having to look in the first place. The need to look is a itself a sign of the limits of power. If you have to look, you do not really control. If you are in control you do not have to look. Nor do you have to categorize, a special way of looking that Foucault calls the gaze (le regard). All you have to do is count [...] As far as the count is concerned, one inmate is exactly like another.” Although this may have validity in some of the larger federal institutions with higher security inmates, the purposes of the halfway house demand individual attention and a scrutinized “gaze.” “Gradual improvement[s]” and behavioral modification must be made if an ex-offender is to be reintroduced to society, if he is to function well upon that reintroduction. Alford, p. 129. But, again, not all systems of surveillance are the same, and so not all relationships of power and control operate in the same way. A distinction between the natural and the synthetic can be made again in the context of the security of the gaze by looking at the two different kinds of case studies.
Again, in the halfway houses, we see a synthetic, imposed system of security following a hierarchical ordering of social constructs. Both Re— and the Co— use video cameras as backups to their personnel. Ad— takes us into the security room on one of the floors; it is located dead center, but is no panopticon. The only side with glass faces the single stairway and elevator entering the floor – this is where the residents access the staff, if the staff are not walking around already, and where they are distributed medication at certain predefined times of day. The side we enter from has a door again outfitted with robust hinges and a shatter-proof glass window, 6”x6”, at eye level. There’s not much to see once inside, some filing cabinets, paperwork strewn across the desk, computers that haven’t been upgraded in at least eight years, and a large television with its screen subdivided to capture all cameras on the floor at once. Ad— explains, “We don’t watch them live, really, but we have them in place so we have the ability to go back and watch, just in case.” Both centers also rely heavily on the proximity of the staff to their residents to ensure that a watchful eye is always present. See Mi—’s comments on the interpersonal control model in “Absent Distractions.”
In a more dynamic system, it is, however, natural for people to look out for each other. In Ga—, we heard many comments about specific members of the community identified as “watchers,” people who keep tabs on their neighbors and vocalize problems when they see them. This came up with exceptional frequency when we asked about where the market could be located. One resident’s response was to suggest, “Have you all talked with Ka—? You should go see her and ask her what she thinks [pointing to house down the street]. She knows about everything that goes on here; she’ll know what the safest place for something like this would be.” These traits were not identified as nosiness but as knowledge; there were people the community knew they could turn to for information about each other / themselves. This is likely in part due to the outright rejection of any sort of synthetic security; the neighborhood as a whole has complete distrust in police and other authorities. As another resident tells us, “They don’t come around here anymore.” See interview with Ke— for further explanation, in “Placeholder Distractions.” Natural emergence of neighborhood surveillance methods may not be as systematic and sometimes not as effective as surveillance techniques employed synthetically, but they do help to balance the power relationships across the community itself, rather than imposed in top-down fashion.
Placeholder Distractions
Mi—’s tolerance for certain luxuries leads to an increased number of personal possessions, which then leads to more intense personalization of spaces in the dorms (sleeping quarters and personal storage space for all residents of the Co—, these two rooms, which each house between 20 and 30 men, are easily the largest spaces in the building). “People always want more stuff in here than we have room for,” Mi— explains, “and sometimes even the milkcrates can clutter the place too much – we had to start limiting how many each person is allowed after someone constructed an entire entertainment system out of ten of them; it was like a wall.” Black and grey milkcrates act as storage units, tables, and stools. Almost every bed has double-stacked milkcrates with a small (12-inch limit) television. The crates are stacked on their side, allowing easy access to whatever is stored within them: in most cases, the top crate holds DVDs and/or games with a console; the bottom typically holds socks. There are a few lewd posters on some of the wardrobes, a few more of slightly less aggressively sexualized actresses from recognizable Hollywood films, but all of the personal photographs of family, etc., are absent from display. Upon closer inspection, Eventually, as Mi— spoke to us, more of the residents left the dorm room, leaving our group alone with Mi— at one end of the space. We were encouraged by Mi— to “look around”; no one got too close, but with the residents no longer occupying the space, the students felt more comfortable exploring the space more closely. A few cameras came out (photographs were permitted at the Co— as long as they did not include any residents) and the sketching became much more intimate as students began to draw details of personal effects. they are sometimes found in with the socks, sometimes between a folded stack of laundry, sometimes they are taped to a wall or wardrobe, but facing the bed, hidden by the dim light or overhanging sheets from the bunk above. Mi— continues on about lists of approved property and contraband. Another resident, Petey, notices students cautiously peering around his bed, and invites conversation. “It’s a hotel!” he says with such enthusiasm we cannot decide if the comment is sarcastic or genuine. As he goes back to what may or may not be a movie from the Bourne Trilogy, Mi— hurries us along to the next room. Many of the residents express gratitude in the leniency “compared to prison” – those who we saw, in the middle of the day, appeared relaxed and generally content with their surroundings – and like having something to do. The Co— does have an integrated work program – another step in the process of reentry is employment – but not everyone finds a job immediately, and even those that do have a significant amount of off-time that, in Mi—’s mind, they must keep occupied. Allowances in personalization and suggestions of activities to fill in empty time both allow for distractions: minor customization lets residents see the benefits to a lower security level facility (again, “compared to prison”) and puts their situation in a more positive light; video-watching and game-playing mean that the resident has something to do, something that, though it may not be particularly productive, will keep them, in Mi—’s mind, from getting into any real trouble. As Director, and as the staff member with by far the most accountable experience working in corrections, Mi— has become quite a literal “author” of the Co—. Because the Co— is not associated with Federal funding and does not take Federal prisoners, Mi— himself has less restrictions to contend with (compare with Re—, Inc., which has recently made many major concessions at their new facility to meet Federal regulations) and, though he doesn’t make decisions on his own, has a significant impact on writing the history of the Co—.
The weekend proceeding our neighborhood tour with Ri—, a board member of the Bl— Corporation, our student group finds ourselves introduced to Ke—, An opportunistic interview when our original interviewee found herself too busy and wrangled someone she knew off the street to come talk to us, which he did for almost two hours. This interview occurred on September 17. whose role in the neighborhood may be a bit unclear, despite his voluble conversation style; he starts with a warning:
I don’t want to lie to people. It’s bad. Bl— is telling people lies, trying to get them to come here, as if that will fix things. But then people get hurt. And you seem like nice folks; I would feel responsible if you wandered up into Ga— on your own and got hurt. It’s great that you want to help, but you don’t know anything but the lies and optimism they tell you.
The meeting occurs in a gallery on Avenue, something that Ke— is quick to point out to us:
It’s okay down here on [Avenue], where people can protect you. I’ve got eyes everywhere down here. But up there, it’s a different sort of zone, you know? It changes day-to-day; some days, it’s okay, but some days, it’s real hot. Do you know what that means? It’s bad, icky. You don’t want to go up there. For her [pointing to the student with the darkest skin in the group], yea, she’d probably be okay with a babyface like that, but you all [gesturing to the rest – of various but generally paler complextion], they’d think you were cops, especially with those notebooks, scribbling things down all the time, or FBI.
The racial tension in the community had not presented itself to us in such clearcut ways at this point, but Ke— assures us again that as long as we stay down on Avenue, no one will bother us. It is difficult, however, to engage in and promote positive change for a community you are trying to avoid, so we prompt Ke— to explain the threat of violence more specifically, and how it impacts the social atmosphere of Ga—.
There have been incidents in the past few years with cops. Lots of shootings, but you wouldn’t hear about them. A group of cops beat the hell out of a kid with a Mountain Dew bottle in his pocket because they thought it was a gun. Everyone is already scared, really paranoid. Things need to change. If they don’t, there will be a war, and everyone, everyone who’s there now and anyone who walks in, will become a target.
Ke—'s discussions of gang violence in schools is also difficult to hear: the neighborhood’s schools are gradually being shut down because so many parents have pulled their children out to avoid this threat of violence. He tells us about his attempts to show kids an alternative lifestyle, “But once they’ve got a gun, it’s all over for them.” Ke— continues, “And everyone’s got a record, for something. But guns do worry me more than drugs.” He explains that drugs are a way to control and pacify, to some extent, certain groups in the area, and as long as there is a steady stream of available stock, things are calm. Ke— makes a distinction between the potential danger of gang activity, especially for youth who become involved involuntarily, and the more internal destruction that goes hand-in-hand with drug use. Drugs become a sort of distraction for many in the neighborhood, to escape the realities of their situation. “We celebrate every day because we need to, we celebrate that we’re alive. Making some noise, it’s just another day. We have to do it because don’t have anything – movie theaters, pools – and we don’t have jobs.” Certain activities – including drug use, drinking, “making some noise” – are necessary confirmations of survival to many in the neighborhood.
These celebrations, though sometimes illegal or at least disruptive to nonparticipants, are form of distraction, breaks from inactivity. If we look at the demographics of the neighborhood: Ga—’s population has decreased consistently since 1990, and 42.7% of Ga—’s population lives below the poverty line, with clear geographic-economic parallels drawn within the neighborhood. We heard over and over again, from Ci— and from residents: “Many of Ga—’s men are unemployed [and] have little access to employment opportunities.” In the words of a Ga— resident, “There are people around here, older people, who need help, need some people with certain skills to help them, and the guys around here need something to do; it would be great if we could bring them together and get things done. A lot of guys, they’re just hanging around here waiting for something to do.” Demographics compiled by Ci— in Si— Study. Quote from September 14. Bourgois’s time in East Harlem leads him to the conclusion that:
Illegal enterprise, however, embroils most of its participants in lifestyles of violence, substance abuse, and internalized rage. Contradictorily, therefore, the street culture of resistance is predicated on the destruction of its participants and the community harboring them. In other words, although street culture emerges out of a personal search for dignity and a rejection of racism and subjugation, it ultimately becomes an active agent in personal degradation and community ruin.
Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 9.For the residents of Ga— who participate in these activities, these distractions serve as an outlet for their general frustration with their economic situation, one they can not so easily resolve on their own. In some cases, these “celebrations of life” lead to much more dramatically destructive involvement in gang violence and substance abuse, activities swelling beyond “personal degradation” and becoming sources of “community ruin.” And yet, from our interview with Ke—, these activities also help to create some sense of balance in the community, pacifying individuals that could be much more violent “if they don’t get the fix they need” and has the potential to “being people together.” It is not just that the neighborhood is suffering from its involvement with drugs, etc., but that the life-cycle of the community as a whole currently has a certain dependency on these activities, for its economic survival as well as its social unity. If change is to happen, then, it must account for this dependency and not just try to immediately eradicate the issue outright.
A week later, Ri— of Bl— takes the class on a tour of hilltop section of the neighborhood (to the north, significantly higher in elevation than the streets running parallel to Avenue, where newer housing developments are currently under construction). He begins by speaking to us about the “difficulties [of] working with people who just don’t want to get involved in the community [...] people who don’t take care of their own property and don’t keep up with mortgage payments, so we can’t expect them to help with other properties.” Meanwhile, we are standing on the sidewalk in front of a particularly dilapidated residence, the owner watching us from his living room window (we can see him easily with the lack of any curtains or shades). As Ri— is wrapping up his soliloquy about the difficulties of community involvement, the resident steps outside and asks what the hell we are doing there. Ri— calmly explains that he is leading a group of architecture students on a tour through the neighborhood because we are helping to design things like a park and a market and a radio station that will help the community. The resident continues to stare at us from his porch, saying nothing. The tour continues, with Ri— lecturing us on the economic and social difficulties the neighborhood has faced, the students following, some taking pictures, most sketching and taking notes, and Fo— following up in the back, stopping to explain to each resident who questions our presence, in a calm, slightly sympathetic but uncondescending voice, that we are students volunteering our time to design things that will ultimately benefit Ga—, and are visiting so as to better understand the area. The resident stares at us for a few more minutes before turning back inside. Ri— lights up when we get to the football team, who are tossing a ball around as they wait for the school bus that will bring them to their game. The football team is a pet project of Ri—’s. As he tells us, while still standing amidst a crowd of orange jerseys, “These kids need something to do when they get home from school so they don’t get involved in drugs and gang activities [...] and a lot of them don’t have any male role-models in their family so this is a really good way to show them a positive way to work through the difficulties of living in a low-income household.” Many of the students are a bit disturbed by Ri—’s tendency to talk about very personal struggles members of the neighborhood are dealing with in a very public way, and right in front of them; one classmate whispers to me: “If I were one of those kids, I’d probably like to punch him in the face right about now.” Regardless, the boys appear unperturbed, and continue to horse around, with little regard to the grass and mud stains gradually appearing on their formerly impeccable uniforms, paying little attention to us or to Ri—. The football program is, in fact, one of the few things the whole community really does support; almost all Saturdays are dedicated to watching their team and cheering on the youth of the neighborhood. It is recognized as a good way to keep them “out of trouble” and a way to give adolescents and teenagers “something to do.”
Concentration and Distraction
There is a certain level of manipulation involved in this second typological category of distraction, placeholder In linguistics, a “placeholder” is a sentence element required by syntactic constrains but which carries little to no semantic information. In other words, it is necessary to follow a predefined rule set, but, in most cases, contributes little meaning on its own. distractions. These distractions have a tendency to be advocated by and made more easily available by groups or persons who hold most control in the community, but for reasons not entirely in the best interest of the individual. Historically, two major strategies exist for implementing order and security onto a confined group: The first model is concentration, consisting of inactivity, silence, and isolation, “nothing but their thoughts,” a physical separation from everything but self, from which the incarcerated can internally come to terms with their confinement. The alternative model is distraction, activity, labor, habitual tasks that the entire group participates in regularly. The first is now considered to be inhumane (unless deemed imperative for the safety of others, in the instance of a highly dangerous “supermax” inmate), but was popular for a long time, especially among religious communities. “The isolation of a convict from the external world, from everything that motivated the offense, from the complicities that facilitated it. The isolation of the prisoners from one another. [...] The rehabilitation of the criminal is expected not of the application of a common law, but of the relation of the individual to his own conscience and to what may enlighten him from within. [...] the only operations of corrections were the conscience and the silent architecture that confronted it.” Foucault, Discipline and Punishment, p. 236. The second continues to be used, treating (or training) man as machine – its intended effect of “reformation” is similar. As a sort of psuedo-production, “[labor] is intrinsically useful, not as an activity of production, but by virtue of the effect it has on the human mechanism. It is a principle of order and regularity; through the demands that it imposes, it conveys, imperceptibly, the forms of a rigorous power; it bends bodies to regular movements, [...] it imposes a hierarchy and a surveillance.” Ibid., 242. Both are ways of breaking the individual in order to re-conform to social norms. Neither is completely successful: both turn man into something he is not (beast, or machine). These placeholder distractions are a way of imposing regularity and hierarchy – like the second methodology for order and distraction, it is a controlled dose of activity that often pacifies (sometimes through exhaustion) the confined. The confined individual may perceive the labor as “good for them,” and welcome the break from idleness, but it is an exercise in behavior manipulation and stabilizes self-representation, suppressing the individual and any actual development.
In the context of these case studies, authorities encourage certain activities to maintain the status quo. While certain rules and signs may contribute to a pacification of a population, See also “Spare Change.” this other method keeps a community preoccupied on activities that are not necessarily productive, for the very sake of keeping them preoccupied. Although some of these activities, such as the football league in Ga—, have the potential to become productive and advantageous to both the individual participant and the greater community, they are not seen as such by figures of authority; if anything, these activities are seen as a way to “get out,” but not as a way to benefit the community left behind.
Designed Distractions
I finish explaining my conceptual drive for my Baltimore halfway house design, out of breath, and take a sip of water as I watch my professor’s eyes flicker across my drawings for a few seconds before they land back on me. “That sounds great. How do you do that formally?” Mc— smirks as he says this, but after working with him for the past few months, I know he is actually expecting a good answer from me. An answer not just spoken, but shown. This was during the midreview of the Baltimore project, which took place on November 14.
A similar moment occurred exactly one month before, during a presentation given to our Is— class.This class presentation was given on October 14. I can feel Za— fidgeting besides me at the front of the room. Our teammates, exhausted from the night before, are barely able to stand up straight, leaning against the chalkboard; all of us stare up at Fo— with eyes desperate for approval after our five minute presentation updating our professor, our class, and our client on the Street Market project. Before anyone passes out, we hear his voice coming from the dark back of the room: “You guys have always been really thoughtful about the way you’re doing this, and you’ve been extremely considerate with the way you engage with the needs of the community. But you’ve got to design something.”
But the design is not the endgame.
If architecture and confinement are both about definite physical boundaries, it is how we read these boundaries, these limitations, and how we interact with them, that is most telling of our position of power or lack thereof. As we saw in both case studies, the lack of certain technological distractions consumer culture takes for granted starts to demand a certain closeness, even a certain empowerment, to the community as a group; their communication becomes more internalized and strengths the bonds across a community. Too much forced internal interaction, though, can sometimes also lead to conflict, or at least pre-conflict isolation – as seen in the Co—, residents feeling particularly claustrophobic in an overly communal environment will often try to carve out any small space they can for themselves, either through attempts to wall off their bed area with milkcrates or by escaping into the smoke of a short-lived fix from a cigarette while they perch on a chair as far as possible from all others in the room. The physicality of communication is just another layer of interaction to avoid in such a cramped space, despite its benefits.
Confinement is at its most oppressive when it is, as in the above examples, so explicitly felt in the body. In an environment that one cannot, or feels one cannot, change, individuals often surrender the majority of their power – the ability to act – to those that are, or fell they are, entitled to initiate such revision. To those for whom the environment’s potential dynamic qualities prove to be too seductive, the environment becomes a negative distraction. Unless authorities have control over what is changing, it cannot be manipulated by other members of the group.
This also recalls a distinction made earlier in this study, that between a natural and synthetic systems of order and security, one of which emerges out of a community, the other which is imposed externally. As with the distinction between what boils down to natural versus synthetic communication systems, there are obvious benefits to a self-sustaining network of order and security: increase in trust and strengthening the community. A close-knit community can provide support for its individuals as well as the greater whole.
Designers, unfortunately, have contributed to this complex themselves. An iconic piece of architectural writing from the early twentieth-century is an essay by Adolf Loos, titled, “The Story of the Poor Little Rich Man.” Originally published “Vom armen reichen Mann,” Neues Wiener Tagblatt (April 26, 1900 – Vienna). Its translated form can be found in the book On Architecture, trans. Michael Mitchell (Riverside, California: Ariadne Press, 1996), pp. 48-52. In this story, the architect is hired to shower the rich man in art, and he soon takes on the role of an oppressive tyrant who refuses to compensate his composition with the imperfect additions the rich man tries to include in his life. Ultimately, the rich man’s life becomes frozen, no longer a life, because it is “complete”; there can be no potential for lesser (or greater) things in life, because the architect has created a world for him that has everything. (And to stress the point, this is a Rich Man, someone with plenty of societal and economic power for himself.) Stories like this, fictive or not, remind us that architecture and the “rules” that define one’s life in it can be just as restrictive as an actual prison. Loos makes the case, as does this study, that opening up the possibilities of individual choice, and the ability to change one’s own environment, are the only way free the occupant from an otherwise oppressive state of living.
