This project is for a prison on the edge of the centre of Zaandam, a town to the north of Amsterdam. The chosen site addresses the uneasy relationship prisons have with the public domain. The signature function of detention requires a visible location in an urban context. But space is a scarce commodity in the city. With a surface area of less than a hectare, the chosen site epitomizes the problem of the space taken up by a prison. A typological study showed the quadrangle to be a suitable type for this site, owing to its exceptional compactness of arrangement. In addition, this model makes it possible to combine the structures of surveillance and restriction into a 'security ring' round the prison. This has several advantages. The guards can be on the spot sooner should an inmate manage to access the ring zone between 'fence' and 'wall'; the prison can be built more compactly; and the model allows the prison's operational structures to be made explicit. It is this last-named aspect that Foucault makes much of in Discipline and Punish. The increasing refinement of the mechanisms of punishment have meant that the workings of the prison can be hidden from public view.

The detail development of the design concentrates on the structure of surveillance. Its main focus in this respect is to optimize the surveillance circuit of stairs, galleries and observation points within the security ring as well as organize the neighbouring common areas.

The ring consists of an inner and an outer layer, a double boundary for the prison. The inner layer separates the common areas from the surveillance circuit. This layer is solid, with small apertures to let in the light from outside. The outer layer consists of glass U sections interwoven with a steel grille.

Observation points fitted with a special security glass are placed at strategic locations. The unilateral view means that as in a panopticon, guards can see the inmates while themselves remaining invisible. As such security glass only works when looked through from a dark space, the observation points have been designed as relatively closed volumes. They are so placed that the guards can monitor the common areas as well as quickly intervene should this be necessary.

The guard doing his round in the ring is visible from the public realm until he enters an observation point, when the roles are reversed. The guard has now become the unseen observer.

The detention model is targeted at a clear division between inmate cells and a common area subject to the strictest surveillance. The cell is marked by a great degree of privacy. For this reason the model is incompatible with the current drive towards more than one inmate per cell. Here the condition of social rather than spatial restraint obtains. It gives inmates a living environment that has as little contact as possible with the operational mechanisms. By abstracting these structures, a permissible degree of normalization is attained. Foucault describes this process as being 'to induce in the inmate a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power' (Discipline & Punish, p. 201).

Place of education: TU Eindhoven
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Jos Bosman, Jacob Voorthuis, John Swagten