11/5/2022 0 Comments Prison architect designsIn lawsuits aiming to stop solitary confinement as “cruel and unusual” under the Eighth Amendment, advocates have to show that there is an “evolving standard of decency” that now considers solitary unacceptable. Because projects with execution chambers and solitary confinement are relatively rare, I don’t think people will want to sacrifice all the benefits of AIA membership to pursue the occasional project.īeyond the individual impact, AIA has now joined the group of professional associations that officially refuse execution and torture within the U.S. It helps with marketing, recruitment, training, continuing education, and networking, not to mention the pride and satisfaction many members have in the organization. That doesn’t mean you lose your architecture license-that comes from a state licensing board, which is separate from AIA-but membership is valuable. If you violate a rule, you can get a letter of censure (embarrassing!) or even get thrown out of the organization. This is a rule in the Code of Ethics, which means AIA can enforce it. In 2020 we saw the same situation all over again, and perhaps we realized that something needed to change because whatever was supposed to have changed after 20 had not changed.ĪIA now says that members can’t design execution chambers or spaces for prolonged solitary confinement. I was thinking back to the movements after Trayvon Martin’s death in Florida in 2012 and Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson in 2014. Then the mass demonstrations raised awareness to the point where it finally became mainstream. Of course, organizers and advocates had been laying the groundwork, developing the analysis of mass incarceration and structural racism for years. In 2020, for a change, a majority of white people saw themselves as allied with Black people against racism rather than as threatened with the loss of white privilege. We had Covid, the economic crisis caused by Covid, Trump, and unabated police violence, all at the same time. Many other commentators have summed up how the injustice suffered by communities of color-and especially the Black community-boiled over this summer and led to powerful demands for change. AIA did not go to other groups within the organization who might have spoken up for a stronger ethics code, they just went looking for objections, so it was never a process set up to succeed. Up until 2020, AIA’s national leadership deferred to the members who designed prisons, who were quite opposed and weren’t learning they thought it would cost them work. When people learn about everything wrong with execution and solitary confinement they can change their opinions, and AIA was avoiding that. Their fear kept them from engaging with the substance of the issues-racial justice, mass incarceration, human rights-until this year. They were afraid this would appear political or partisan, although of course human rights are not a partisan issue, unless you have a party that believes that people outside their party shouldn’t be treated as equals or aren’t fully human. When you looked at the reasons they gave over the years for not doing it-too complicated, potential antitrust concerns, and what have you-you could tell they were looking for excuses. I think it took such a long time because AIA was scared of it.
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