These sketches are the result of a series of dialogues from the Kakolanmaki competition as we worked at solving questions related to site, existing buildings which were not to be removed, and the rather stringent requirements of the project brief. Increasingly, our explorations and discussions led us to move underground, beneath the datum of the earth’s surface and to place our new programmatic elements, large, open spaces which could not be held within the limits of the existing buildings, nor placed on the site in new containers, beneath the surface of the existing Kakola and remand plazas. Lit from above through translucent plaza floors, these spaces, along with the new addition of the hub, soon became the heart of the project.
The site concept sketches deal with ideas which emerged from a reading of Micrea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane, in which the author discusses the emergence of society as pockets of order within a larger chaos. The prison, then, is an attempt to remove dangerous disorderly elements from within society at large to a place where they may be contained: chaos within order. Sketches: Vanessa Keith, Marsh Kriplen, Carlos Soubie.
