DPIC Podcast: Ethical-Design Advocate Raphael Sperry on Why the American Institute of Architects Banned Members From Designing Death Chambers

In the March 31, 2021 pod­cast episode of Discussions with DPIC, man­ag­ing direc­tor of DPIC, Anne Holsinger, and Raphael Sperry, pres­i­dent of Architects/​Designers/​Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), dis­cuss the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) new ethics pol­i­cy pro­hibit­ing mem­bers from design­ing exe­cu­tion cham­bers and death-row soli­tary con­fine­ment cells. ​“Architects have been com­plic­it in human rights abuse by design­ing exe­cu­tion cham­bers in the United States and spaces for soli­tary con­fine­ment,” Sperry explains. ​“We need to take respon­si­bil­i­ty and tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty means stop­ping doing these bad things.”

The AIA’s 2020 Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct now includes rules stat­ing clear­ly that “[m]embers shall not know­ing­ly design spaces intend­ed for exe­cu­tion,” and “[m]embers shall not know­ing­ly design spaces intend­ed for tor­ture, includ­ing indef­i­nite or pro­longed soli­tary con­fine­ment.” The recent amend­ments come eight years after ADPSR began peti­tion­ing for this change and reflects the profession’s awak­en­ing to the impact of its role in cre­at­ing spaces used to exe­cute or torture individuals.

The com­men­tary to the new ethics rules cites to the ​“Nelson Mandela Rules” — the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners — as guides to eth­i­cal design. ​“I think for advo­cates who are look­ing for that evolv­ing stan­dard of decen­cy, not only did archi­tects say that we’re not going to do soli­tary con­fine­ment, but we said we think that inter­na­tion­al human rights are stan­dard for us,” Sperry said. ​“And hope­ful­ly, that’ll real­ly help bring inter­na­tion­al human rights stan­dards into wider use in American courts.” 

AIA is the pre­em­i­nent pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion for archi­tects in the U.S., lead­ing efforts in archi­tec­tur­al edu­ca­tion, pub­lic out­reach, advo­ca­cy, com­mu­ni­ty rede­vel­op­ment, and gen­er­al sup­port. ADPSR is an inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tion found­ed as part of the anti-nuclear move­ment in the ear­ly 1980s. It now ​“has a more con­tem­po­rary mis­sion,” Sperry said, cen­tered on ​“peace, social jus­tice, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, and social­ly responsible development.”

Because the AIA rep­re­sents more than half of all archi­tects licensed in the United States, its code of ethics has a major impact on American archi­tec­tur­al design. ​“They very much con­sid­er them­selves the voice of the archi­tec­ture pro­fes­sion,” Sperry said in the pod­cast inter­view. Sperry acknowl­edges that the new ethics rules will not end exe­cu­tions — depart­ments of cor­rec­tion and pri­vate pris­ons can still con­tract with archi­tects who are not AIA mem­bers or con­tin­ue using exist­ing facil­i­ties. Nonetheless, he is opti­mistic that the rules will help bring about social change. 

“It’s part of the move­ment,” he says. ​“I hope oth­er peo­ple in the move­ment can make use of it because I think it’s just as valu­able to talk about the fact that archi­tects won’t design exe­cu­tion cham­bers as it is for archi­tects to actually stop.”

Architectural design choic­es reflect and can affect social val­ues, Sperry notes. The answer to prison design ques­tions doesn’t lie in design­ing nicer pris­ons, he explains; it comes from design­ing spaces that direct­ly address the root caus­es of vio­lence and crime: access to men­tal health resources, sub­stance abuse pro­grams, afford­able hous­ing, and bet­ter schools. ​“The research shows that peo­ple with men­tal health and sub­stance abuse prob­lems don’t get bet­ter in jail. If you want them to get bet­ter, you have to treat them in a com­mu­ni­ty set­ting,” he says. ​“Why don’t we just design com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters for those peo­ple, put designed places in com­mu­ni­ties for men­tal health and sub­stance abuse coun­sel­ing and treatment?”

Prisons, Sperry says, are a ​“built exam­ple of the kind of racism and vio­lence that’s inher­ent in American cul­ture. … You can’t solve that by mak­ing nicer build­ings. We real­ly need a much bigger change.”