... for laws (and practicalities) often prevent dreams from becoming deeds...

The Prison is a total place of confinement combining three types of incarceration: the customary enclosed wing, the open wing and the maximum security wing. The enclosed type consists of four independently functioning departments each with 100-odd cells and an exercise yard. Cell blocks and yards are sliced through by a sports complex and a 'culture corridor'.

The maximum security prisoners are locked up in a wing of their own. On the same level as their cells are showers, a lounge and a games room; an open walkway leads down to the exercise yard. In the open type, prisoners spend the last three months of their confinement in comparative freedom. The 'glass hook', a fragment of transplanted city incising the open wing, continually confronts these prisoners with the urban world outside.

Set in the centre of Eindhoven, the Prison is hemmed in by roads, railways, offices and cycle paths with notoriously unsafe tunnels. Calling much into question, the Prison is met with incomprehension which can turn into either understanding or anger. The introducing of such features as 'sign', 'dialogue' and 'peeks in' tampers with the traditional idea of the prison.

From the main roads, the prison registers as a sign, a Titanic with a glass skin. The shadow of the masses beyond the facade is outlined against the frosted glass wall. At night, vague shapes appear on the wall, shapes that seem to evaporate when the sky is overcast. Cyclists, sandwiched between the prison and the raised main road, peer in cautiously through the glass, where they see snippets of prison life. Minor contacts of major impact, enhancing the imagination. The train passenger, himself a prisoner in his compartment, enters into a dialogue with the building and its inmates. His view can penetrate deep into the bowels of the institution, yet such contact is a transient affair.

Such slogans as 'more police on the street!' and 'more cells' are merely attempts to cover up our sense of insecurity as well as the prisons' lack of success. This Prison fuels the discourse, raising questions without answering them and revealing the ambivalence of such places of confinement by engaging the city in dialogue.

Place of education: TU Eindhoven
Tutors: Gerard van Zeijl, Tom Dubbelman, Sjef van Hoof & Wolf Schijns
Specialization: architecture.