Restorative Justice
Center
A center focused on restorative practices in the American criminal justice system
Yale School of Architecture
Studio Iñaqui Carnicero
Middletown, Connecticut
2018
A series of striations merge interior and exterior, landscape and program. Nature acts as a healing tool for those in the restorative justice process and visitors, who perceive it from every point. The building is blind from the exterior streets, open only for its north and south entrances, fostering privacy and safety within. Passerbys perceive the Center’s diverse landscape typologies protruding between each volume.
Alternating between solid and void, interior spaces are separated by gardens but connected visually by glass and physically by passageways. The spaces can be fully open during the summer or fully enclosed during the winter. Two fully enclosed “pods” within the building are safe spaces where the restorative process takes place and the condition is inverted - private rooms within an enclosed garden.
The sloped site generates the ground plane − the building follows the natural topography and steps down towards the Connecticut River. The building’s environmental performance responds to the site’s climate, varying immensely from season to season.
