Abstract:
RESEARCH QUESTION How can An Exploration of Expanded Threshold inform the Methodology of Prison Design at the Prison Boundary? How can Pacific Notions of Space supplement this design of Boundary within an Auckland City Context? In the Essay “Bricks of Shame? Some Thoughts on Prison Design” By Vivien Stern, a question is posed about the social impact of prisons asking ‘who is held within the walls, fellow citizens or enemies of society? Is the Purpose of prison retribution of redemption?” Which frames the attitude towards prisons and the associated shame. In terms of direction this thesis does not aim to solve the issues of crime and rehabilitation. This job is left to policy and policy makers. This thesis aims to explore the nature of threshold with a prison defining a prison as a place of education. A nuance from the popular prison as a space of punishment. It also looks at the issue of a prison from a Samoan perspectice running parallel to notions of threshold and western philosophers such as Deleuze and Foucault, and at times intersecting. This thesis is essentially trying to imagine, like a samoan village what an ‘open soceity’ looks like withi a Prison-public relationship. Using Western references such as Bentham, Foucault and Deleuze to compare and contrast Pacific notions not as a means to validate the other but as a basis of theoretical and conceptual grounding. This leads into the notion of the ‘Panoptic Habitus’ coined by Refiti as a way to create a hybrid approach to a space that hinges on ides of ‘to be seen’. The Method of this thesis was one that looked at films to realise what medias depictions of prison and thresholds are. This was to gauge what societys views from a medium that reaches all. The creative enquiry from this lead to an additive procees whereby design started with iterations of drawing and making of ‘the component. The premise to this was a still shot from the film ‘The Shawshank Redemption, where an idea of designing from the prisoner up rather than a top down approach starting with planning. Overlay this with notions of threshold discussed by David Leatherbarrow of maximum interface, depth as well as programmatic and spiritual thresholds. This creative enquiry was to investigate the extent to which the prison and public conditions can fold and intertwine with each other within the Auckland CBD, Elliot street carpark space. It is here that there is a proposal from New Development group to the Auckland City council for a 52 story skyscraper. This offered an opportunity to put a prison into tension with what can be seen as a symbol of the corporation, the skyscraper. This design project will be added into this proposal, inhabiting it, creating opportunities for the design project and the NDG proposal to collaborate and ‘lean on each other’. In doing so this project attempts to break the application of power on prisoners as a top down relationship to one that affects all bodies and all elements; The public and prisoner space will have an equality of space and program but also the architecture where the structure and design resist strong enclosure and lean on each other. For this thesis, a hypothesis of a prison within a CBD can coexist within the heavy financial district but also serves to prick the consciousness of public about issues around corporation and marginalisation. This will be investigated through the articulation of threshold and space within the city. It also indicates the extent of power that architecture has on behaviour within its ‘enclaves. It also shows the overriding power of policy. It is non the less an interesting study about methodology and prison design through the eyes of pacific notions of space, time and surveillance and notions of Expanded threshold.