Designing Justice + Designing Spaces

Designing Justice + Designing Spaces is a multi-disciplinary architecture and design firm, real estate development firm, and nonprofit with the mission to end mass incarceration and systemic inequity. The leaders at DJ+DS have vast and varied types of expertise in community engagement, evidence-based design research, and in the design of peacemaking spaces and arenas for reparation. At the core of their initiative, DJ+DS maintains that the spaces a society builds reflect the systems of power and value within that society. Thus, institutional spaces (like prisons) that uphold values of punishment and racism over all else reflects key aspects of the soul of American systems of value and hegemony.

DJ+DS engages communities in the design and development of new buildings, spaces, and tools to address the root causes of mass incarceration. Their work seeks to counter the societal inequities evident in the dominant architectural models of courthouses and prisons by creating new prototypes for spaces that seek to uphold “justice.” Examples of these projects include the creation of new design concepts for peacemaking centers, transitional housing, and mobile villages— all with the guidance, visions, and ongoing feedback of the people for whom the spaces are created.

DJ+DS harnesses the power of “the built environment” to support the success and expansion of restorative justice, education, and workforce development programs instead of imprisonment. DJ+DS approaches their projects with designs that incorporate direct feedback from formerly incarcerated individuals and individuals with low equity and accessibility rates. For example, in DJ+DS’s 2024 project, “The Architecture of Re-Entry,” designers created alternative spaces for currently incarcerated people configured with modular wooden units and shared lounge spaces, designed with feedback from formerly incarcerated individuals, some of whom assisted in the prototype’s fabrication. With this sort of holistic design, residents experience more privacy and agency than they would in the open-plan facilities of more conventional transitional and prison housing.