Schools and Prisons
And how to avoid making everything into a prison
I’m Tim Gorichanaz, and this is Ports, a newsletter about design and ethics. You’ll find this week’s article below, followed by Ports of Call, links to things I’ve been reading and pondering this week.
A guy I went to high school with once used the Postal Service song “This Place is a Prison” as background music for a class presentation. This place is a prison. And these people aren’t your friends.
I’m sure many kids consider school to be a prison. And many more, surely, would rather not be there.
But if, as Aristotle says, all people by nature desire to learn, how did it come to be that we think schools are anything like prisons?
For starters, school buildings themselves look an awful lot like prisons. The Cultural Tutor made this observation recently in a Twitter thread. Take a look at the comparison below.
Imagine removing the labels, shuffling the photos, and trying to sort the schools from the prisons. You couldn’t do it.
This is perhaps a depressing observation, but it doesn’t yet answer the question of why things are this way.
Two World-Systems
The architect Christopher Alexander observed that there are two different approaches to architecture, each working toward different goals. Because these approaches pervade every aspect of creating a building, from philosophy to funding to construction, Alexander calls these two approaches “world-systems.”
System A, which is how people made virtually all buildings up until the 20th century, focuses on creating spaces that enhance human well-being. Living life is the goal.
System B, which emerged slowly over the centuries but flowered in the middle of the 20th century, focuses instead on efficiency and profit-maximization.
Buildings created with System A tend to be made of a mix of materials, while in those made with System B, one material predominates. Buildings made with System A feel organic and lively, while those made with System B feel machine-like and impersonal. In other words, System B buildings are rather like the schools and prisons shown above.
We may think that System A is obviously desirable, but in our world it’s easier to work with System B, because that’s how the global financial system is set up, as well as the architectural industry—and virtually all industries, when it comes down to it. This is evident in how projects are funded and managed, as Alexander chronicles in his book The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth, as well as in the work that an architect does. For instance, under System A, an architect is involved with both planning and building. But under System B, “Architecture is now only transmitted through drawings. The typical architect does not personally know how to make anything—not buildings, not windows, not floors or ceilings. He or she draws drawings. Some other organization then produces buildings from these drawings.”
Alexander says that a major requirement for System A is that the client have a real vision for life in the building. And that, I think, helps answer the question of why schools and prisons look so much alike.
It’s because whoever is designing these places doesn’t much care about what life will be like for their inhabitants. There’s no vision for life in these places, no care, no responsibility. Schools and prisons are just places to keep humans for a time, whether the eight hours of the school day or the eight years of a sentence. It’s no wonder young people don’t want to go to these schools.
The Pervasiveness of System B
Of course—and you might be thinking this already—it’s not just schools and prisons where this issue occurs, but anywhere System B predominates. Which is to say, pretty much everywhere.
Reflecting on the images of schools and prisons above, it strikes me that they also resemble other buildings I see around the city—water treatment facilities, city-run health centers and so on.
And just as our children spend their days in soulless school buildings, we adults spend our buildings mostly in soulless office buildings. (Meanwhile managers wonder why people prefer to work from home.)
Even my university, like many others, is being overtaken by the logic of the glass high-rise. My college, for example, occupies three floors in the middle of an office building designed for nobody in particular, and as a result the space doesn’t quite match how it actually needs to be used. A few examples: The doors are all glass, distracting both students and professors whenever someone walks by during class. In a west-facing classroom at sunset, it’s impossible for anyone to see. There’s extra space at the end of every hallway, dead and unused. When you wash your hands in the bathroom, you have to drip water across the floor on your way to the paper towels, which people entering and leaving then have to tread through. And on and on.
How to Not Make Everything a Prison
Alexander’s Battle chronicles the creation of a school according to System A. In short, it was a struggle. At several points the whole thing almost failed entirely. There was financial pressure, political intrigue, and even Yakuza violence. “This is a war,” as one of the sub-managers involved put it. The forces that be are on the side of System B.
Reading this book made me feel rather discouraged. The inertia of System B feels basically insurmountable. And yet it’s evident all around that System B is harming us. Through unusable designs, first and foremost, and also the growing malaise and angst that seem to characterize our species today. (I’m sure it’s not the only factor—though I confess to having a conspiratorial bent in that direction—but I have to think that if we had a little more System A in our lives it would help us.)
Yet Alexander maintains a note of hope throughout the book. And he does leave us with some ideas for what we may do, at least as individuals, to work a little more System A into the things we do.
Alexander focuses on architecture—he was, after all, an architect—but in his books he makes it clear that the two world-systems, and his ideas, apply to all realms of human making.
The first thing, as I mentioned above, is to have a vision, and to keep that vision in mind throughout the process.
The second thing is for architects to once again become builders. Architects, Alexander suggests, should not just make their drawings and exit stage left, but be involved all throughout the process. They should learn about the qualities of different building materials and get their hands dirty.
This reminds me of something the design researcher Bill Buxton said of the world of software development—that too often design and engineering are considered discrete phases, whereas it would be better if designers and engineers both were more involved all along the way—as I wrote about a few months back here on Ports.
If Alexander advised architects to become builders, we can follow the analogy in other fields. UX designers should know some code, for instance, and industrial designers should know some engineering. (Interestingly, I wonder if these other fields of design are already less siloed apart than the world of architecture.)
More generally, people should continue to be involved in making things in general, even though making is becoming less and less necessary in our consumption-driven world—also a theme that came up in the book I discussed in last week’s post.
Even if all you have the freedom to do is rearrange the furniture of the room you’re in, you can do so to increase the harmony and sense of life in your space. And that’s a start, and it’s System A.
Ports of Call
An Expensive Watch: Sometimes I get sort of awestruck by the things humans can make. I came across what’s apparently the world’s most complicated watch (if you can call it a watch, given how big it is). Made by the luxury watchmaker Vacheron Constantin, it weighs about a kilogram, has 2,826 parts and is valued at $8 million. Its movement is mesmerizing.
A Phone to Nowhere: In a park in Philadelphia, a new installation encourages visitors to speak on the phone with the dead.
Paintings of Colorful People: I love these abstract, stylized paintings by the artist Marbie.
I remember working on a team graduate school project that focused on the design of collaborative spaces at the College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) at Drexel. Part of our analysis and research emphasized glass exposure and lack of privacy. When you mentioned the example of the college, I immediately remembered the glass doors and the main floor entrance of the large office building on my way to class! The setting did not feel like a comfortable college. On my first day, it was very hectic and overwhelming.