Filling the Gap: Designing for new approaches to diversion, healing and rehabilitation

Filling the Gap: Designing for new approaches to diversion, healing and rehabilitation

Present day societies are facing a wide variety of crises, ranging from the influx of highly addictive drugs to climate change, war, poverty, discrimination, homelessness, the suppression of Indigenous culture, as well as an increasing need for mental health care and support facilities. This in turn is leading some marginalized and struggling members of society towards anti-social behaviour and crime.

While they are often on the frontline of these situations, traditional justice institutions such as police stations, courthouses, and custodial facilities are not always designed to respond effectively to these challenges facing society. As a result, many affected people are falling through the gaps.

Various formal and informal strategies are emerging to address this shortfall, from tent cities and squatter villages, to transitional housing, safe injection sites, Indigenous community centres, organizations providing access to social and mental health services, substance abuse programs, crisis centres, and diversion programs for certain criminal charges. These new typologies seek to avoid institutionalization of the individuals involved and instead try to set them on a path to healing, recovery and rehabilitation.

The Challenge:

The Canadian Academy of Architecture for Justice (CAAJ) invites architecture students to speculate on these issues in a design competition for a new community-oriented building that helps to fill a gap. This involves the selection of a site in a community of the competitor’s choice, identification of the specific crisis (or crises) being addressed, and the development of an architectural or urban design solution.

Design submissions will be evaluated by a jury of justice experts, architects and industry professionals. Participants are highly encouraged to explore a wide spectrum of architectural responses from functional and practical at one end to philosophical and social at the other, including ways in which the building integrates into the community, and acts as a catalyst for building positive relationships with the community it serves.

Design Parameters:

– A community-oriented justice facility that includes program elements that are seen as contributing to help solve the specific crisis that the competitor is addressing, such as health and/or social services, transitional housing, library, educational facility, place of worship, etc.
– A site located in a community of the competitor’s choice
– New, adaptive re-use and/or additions to existing buildings are acceptable, as well as other architectural interventions.

Goals:

Goals of the community-oriented building could be one or more of the following:
– To reduce crime and recidivism by addressing issues that are relevant to the community such as homelessness, substance abuse, mental health, or poverty
– To provide health and/or social services appropriate to the chosen context, in order to address root causes of criminal behaviour
– To divert individuals away from incarceration through community service, addiction programs and other rehabilitation services
– To bridge the gap between the community and its marginalized members
– To give justice-involved individuals a place to feel comfortable, welcome and safe
– To repair fractures within the community.
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Through their design submission competitors are asked to:
– Contribute to the public realm and surrounding context
– Integrate principles of sustainability
– Incorporate features into the physical environment that promote calm, healing and stress relief.

JURY

Carlos Augusto Garcia
Associate Principal, Brooks + Scarpa Architects

David Clusiau
Vice President of Design, NORR Architects & Engineers
CAAJ Chair

Khalil A. Cumberbatch
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Council on Criminal Justice

Susan Davis
​Executive Director, Gerstein Crisis Centre

Jacob Kummer
Architect & Justice Specialist, Montgomery Sisam
CAAJ Vice Chair

Michael Moxam
Vice President & Practice Lead for Design Culture, Stantec