Reaching Beyond Our Grasp

Approaching the ACA host hotel in downtown Chicago from the west along Washington Street, as you pass over State Street, there it is — a new exclamation point for a world class city that treats architecture like a treasured family heirloom. While the ACA may not have known that Frank Gehry’s billowy clouds of steel would be finished just two weeks prior to the opening of the first ACA conference in Chicago in 15 years, the timing, like the weather, was perfect.

The iconic outdoor performance pavilion is the talk of the town. But like most structures that extend the boundaries, the Millennium Park (complete with the amphitheatre, “Cloud Gate,” locally known as the Bean, the BP bridge, the techno-fountain, the Greek peristyle colonnade, and the gardens) had unusually visionary clients.

Suffolk County House of Correction, Boston (1991). Photo: Ed Jacoby/Courtesy The Stubbins Associates Inc.

The city of Chicago — under the dogmatic leadership of Mayor Richard Daley; John Bryan, chairman of the Art Institute of Chicago; and noted architectural prize-giver Cindy Pritsker, owner of the Hyatt Hotel, the ACA host hotel — withstood the tugs and musings of the omnipresent bean counters to facilitate the creation of something that contributes to the image of Chicago as an embracing city.

Every architect knows that good architecture results from good clients; without fearless benefactors, Chicago (like Washington, Paris, London, San Francisco, Seattle also) would just be another faceless cityscape. Visionary benefactors, like leaders, are usually born, not hatched from family wealth or expensive MBA programs. Benefactors can be brave voices within monolithic and bureaucratic governments. The challenge is to find and empower benefactors, especially in the discouraging and idea-deprived economic climate of state and local governments today.

Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago (1975). Photo: Courtesy Turner Construction Co./Chicago.

Correctional environments would not be safe, humane and livable had not bold and creative architects been challenged by visionary clients to confront traditional wisdom and lead us towards new possibilities. Since I am writing this looking out at the skyline of Chicago, I want to start with a few examples of how a rising tide of thoughtful architecture can raise all boats if the benefactors are equally bold and imaginative.

Only a few blocks from the host hotel stands the single architectural statement that changed the landscape for urban detention centers. Designed by the office of Harry Weese, the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) of Chicago is well-established as the facility that introduced the idea that most inmates can be directly supervised in a noise-controlled, barrier-free environment by one officer.

Visionaries (and architects) like Gary Mote, Jim Webster, and Scott Higgins in the Federal Bureau of Prisons encouraged, even demanded, that the designers of FBOP facilities draw from the dynamic departure that the Chicago MCC initiated. Yes, the revolution was helped by the government investing more resources in sustainable architecture, but without equally creative architects, the result would have been just a more expensive box.

At about the same time as the “topping out” ceremony was completed at the Chicago MCC, Ramsey County ( St. Paul) Minn., was designing one of the most architecturally unique facilities in the country. Designed by Paul Silver (then of Gruzen Architects) and the Wold Association, the direct supervision facility with a city park on the roof cascades 150 feet down a cliff to the Mississippi River like a burnt orange waterfall. In terms of urban design, this facility is historical for actual transparency.

Ramsey County Law Enforcement Center, St. Paul (1979). Photo: Courtesy Wold Architects.

From the street level, only the park is visible. A replacement facility had just opened, and inmates were safely nestled into the embankment of the Mississippi River. The sheriff and county commissioners of Ramsey County had the forethought to envision a site that was an urban “throwaway” as useable, and the designers responded with a boundary-stretching operational and architectural solution.

The late 1980s were as exciting for architects practicing in the correctional community as any other time, since governments recognized that incarceration has a Constitutional basis. Numerous examples emerged. Boldness on the part of government leaders and a new stable of architects transferred skills honed in health care, housing and educational designs to correctional environments at the rate of 1,000 new beds per month. In most instances, the combination of benefactor and architect continuously raised the watermark.

Arlington County Detention Facility, Va. (1994). Photo: Courtesy Arlington County Detention Center.

In Arlington County, Va., the commitment of then Sheriff Jim Gondles (current ACA executive director) and Tom Faust, who followed him as sheriff to decentralized management and direct supervision, was encapsulated by Ron Budzinski (then of HLM Architects). The design was literally conceived on the back of an envelop between Marathon and Key West, Fla. Dozens of international correctional officials, not to mention U.S. counties, would tour the Arlington County facility and leave with the inspiration “to proceed and be bold.”

Other cities, realizing that jails were an urban fact of life, sought to escape traditional slit-windowed boxes and create buildings that inspired from without and within. In Allegheny County ( Pittsburgh) the cultural blending of architects Tasso Katselas (Tasso Katselas Associates) and Csaba Balazs (L. Robert Kimball & Associates) produced a major statement along the Ohio River: the county was committed to good design and sound operational practice in this 2,000-bed direct supervision facility.

Along the Charles River in Boston, Stubbins Architects designed a new-generation facility for Suffolk County that not only appeared in Time magazine as an example of responsible civic architecture, but met the operational objectives of then Sheriff Robert Rufo (now Judge Rufo).

Allegheny County Jail, Pittsburgh (1995). Courtesy L. Robert Kimball & Assoc.

Many other excellent examples could be shown of outcomes from bold government benefactors and imaginative architects. The American Institute of Architects’ Committee on Architecture for Justice publishes exemplary projects each year that remind us that we can responsibly meet operational, financial and design objectives with the correctional facilities we build.

To be frank, however, these economic times challenge us to inspire and to innovate more than at any other time in the past three decades. The hesitancy of government to cultivate and embolden benefactors is as discouraging as it is apparent. This timidity is not simply due to economic stresses that will, as all previous cycles, pass to better times. It arises because we do not place a high value on the role of architectural environments to improve an inmate’s attitude about responsibility, choice, change and community.

Is the current trend to avoid risk by producing built examples that future generations will resent?

Removing my Cubs hat for a moment, let me plug the importance of identifying and motivating benefactors within governmental settings. I applaud those appointed and elected leaders in government who acknowledge the importance of imagination, even if the budgeting process appears to discourage even the box, much less anything outside. And I especially tip that hat to the members of the design community who boldly go where others retreat. Hire them. Without them Chicago would be just windy.

Stephen A. Carter, AICP, is principal of Carter Goble Lee LLC, based in Columbia, S.C.