Mas d'Enric Penitentiary / AiB estudi d'arquitectes + Estudi PSP Arquitectura

The prison is an uncomfortable institution and its architecture is often subjugated to technocratic criteria. This servility forces the prison out of the sociocultural realm where it belongs, thus erasing it from public discourse. The invisibility of the penitentiary as an institution demonstrates an unresolved contradiction underlying contemporary society. We intend to explore this contradiction through architecture. A prison must respond to the demand for discipline (confinement) and liberty (reinsertion) at the same time. Within this complex framework, architecture can make use of its ability to synthetically articulate problems that seem contradictory to become an active agent in resolving the paradox of the contemporary penitentiary. Based on our experience with the Mas d’Enric penitentiary, we claim the prison as an object of critical design and we reclaim architecture’s role in multiplying possibilities as opposed to limiting them.