黑料不打烊

School of Visual Arts (SVA) BFA Interior Design: Built Environments presents 鈥淎n Infrastructure for Restorative Justice,鈥� an exhibition of student work exploring a framework for designers of the built environment working to end mass incarceration. Curated by Darrick Borowski & Rik Ekstrom, the exhibition will be on view at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, December 1, 2022 鈥� January 14, 2023. A reception will be held Wednesday, December 7, followed by an in-person lecture. For the lecture event, exhibition curators will present research, explorations and the resulting insights from the first two years of their ongoing design/research project of the same name. Advance registration is required to attend both events.

In the fall of 2019, New York City Council approved plans to close Rikers Island, one of the world鈥檚 largest and most notorious jails. The decision was the result of a long-fought, still ongoing battle to push the city toward reckoning with an unjust and demonstrably racist mass incarceration system. The City settled on a plan to replace the remote island complex with four borough-based jails that will adopt the newest best practices, as seen in more progressive northern European models, and be 鈥渟afer, smaller and more humane.鈥�

The following year saw Black Lives Matter protests erupt in cities around the world. Quarantined citizens were moved to march by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Jacob Blake and more at the hands of police. For educators training future designers of the built environment, it became even more imperative to investigate how cities can be leveraged鈥攕treets, sidewalks, buildings and public places鈥攖o end mass incarceration, while promoting equity and beginning the process of healing in communities disproportionately affected by the carceral system.