PRISM imagines the Just City as one that has no use for prisons. A Just City will believe in community-led rehabilitation, rejuvenation and give help to all those in need in any form needed - not incarceration and isolation. In 1975 the City of Chicago built the Metropolitan Correctional Center - a detention center - in the middle of the city center. Unbeknownst to them, they built a building that can perfectly be integrated into the Just City.
The a PRISON - becomes a PRISM. One that collects the creative energies of people in all its forms and distributes it, learns from it, teaches it, and broadcasts it and shines the light of culture - of all colors - to the city.
So, Let Make Something Happen, we have a building:
Secure? - Let's protect what's important: ALL CULTURES
Heavily Monitored? - Then let EVERYONE see what happens here!
Small Windows? - Great! Art shouldn't be exposed to light anyway!
This project is inspired by (and largely produced while listening to) A Tribe Called Quest's 2016 album We Got it From Here…Thank you 4 Your Service. Although the original intent of the album title has been lost, its implied messages and the message of the whole album is ripe with meaning. Here, it inspires taking a building with a misguided original intent, transforming it, taking ownership of it, and using to celebrate culture, using it as a way to heal, learn, grow, and share.
To the City of Chicago: Thank You for building this structure…we got it from here…
PRISM is a proposal submitted to the Hip Hop Architecture as Design Justice competition 2020.
