Tag: architecture of fear

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Empathy in Historic Preservation | Interview with Historian Madeline Feierstein

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In this interview, Myles Zhang discusses with Madeline Feierstein his research project on the history (and possible future) of the old Essex County Jail in Newark. Madeline Feierstein is a historian of American history based in Alexandria, Virginia. She is particularly focused on psychiatric institutions, military hospitals, and prisons. Madeline has developed popular guided tours in Alexandria and Washington, D.C. Her meticulous research has been showcased at prestigious institutions, including the Alexandria Historical Society, DC Preservation League, and National Museum of Civil War Medicine. She leads significant projects documenting the soldiers who were treated and fell in Alexandria’s wartime hospitals.  Madeline’s… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Interactive time-lapse map about construction of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp

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This project utilizes georeferenced historical maps and time sliders to document the transformation of the region around the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp from 1945 to today. The interactive map highlights the selective preservation, demolition, decay, or adaptive reuse of significant camp structures linked to the Holocaust. The project uses interactive time-lapse cartography to inform public understanding of the Holocaust and the landscape of tragedy it produced. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Civil Rights Rebellion in the Essex County Jail

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Season 13, Episode 6 of the Abandoned Engineering series for Discovery Channel, explores the old Essex County Jail in Newark, New Jersey. After seeing my research and reading my Master’s thesis project, Discovery Channel approached me about co-creating a documentary about this jail, which was streamed in July 2024, both in the U.S. and internationally in 20 languages. Based on featured interviews with me, this documentary commemorates those incarcerated here by highlighting the building’s historical significance and broader themes of injustice. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Setting Up Sex Offenders for Failure

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This blind peer reviewed article discusses how stringent laws for sex offenders, like Megan’s Law and residency restrictions on where sex offenders may live, inadvertently lead to higher rates of re-arrest and re-conviction. These web of laws ironically increase the crime rate and cause thousands of low-income sex offenders to be re-arrested for crimes unrelated to the abuse of minors. Focusing on New York City, this research highlights issues with the home address requirement and suggests reforms to enhance public safety more effectively than current regulations. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Eastern State Penitentiary Construction Sequence

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This time-lapse animation with audio narration uses the tools of virtual reality to reconstruct the appearance of Eastern State Penitentiary during each year of its 148 years of operation from 1823 to 1971. This reconstruction is based on original plans and primary sources about the jail’s architecture. It uses film to reveal how the building’s envelope was expanded and modified each decade in response to evolving design philosophies, public attitudes towards incarceration, and the ever-expanding size of today’s carceral state. VIEW PUBLICATION

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The City as Carceral State

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Context: The following personal essay accompanied my application for the Gupta Values Scholarship from the University of Michigan. I am sharing it here because it speaks more broadly to my background, education, activism, and research interests. Entrance gate to the Old Essex County Jail One out of every one hundred black men in my neighborhood of Newark, NJ is currently in prison. At least half have a permanent criminal record as formerly incarcerated people. Most charges are for drug use and possession, often marijuana records from when marijuana was illegal. My earliest memories of Newark are of the homeless walking… VIEW PUBLICATION

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“Where Evil Dwells” at Newark’s Old Essex County Jail

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This article in the winter 2021 issue The Newarker (a literary and history magazine) traces the history of the old Essex County Jail and what this carceral institution reveals about the city’s broader history. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Newark Changing: Mapping neighborhood demolition, 1950s to today

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Newark Changing is an interactive visual encyclopedia featuring 2,400 photo comparisons from 1959-68 vs. today. The project illustrates the combined impacts of urban renewal, slum clearance, highway construction, and decades of demolition by neglect. Through a historic map, users can explore dozens of neighborhoods and thousands of demolished homes. This research highlights the devastation faced by communities due to decades of anti-urban policy decisions by the government and anti-black investment decisions by corporations.

Visit: NewarkChanging.org/map VIEW PUBLICATION

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A Different Kind of Radiant City: Bucharest

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Comparing Le Corbusier’s plans for Paris with Ceaușescu’s plans for Bucharest Utopia and totalitarianism are both engaged in a mirroring game, tirelessly sending the same image back and forth as if utopia were nothing more than the premonition of totalitarianism and totalitarianism the tragic execution of the utopian dream. Only the distance that separates a dream from its realization seems to stand between the two. – Frédéric Rouvillois Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World Paris: Bucharest: Abstract: Comparing Le Corbusier’s unrealized plans for Paris and dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s completed plans for the Romanian capital Bucharest… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Democracy’s Prison Problem

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How much does the existence of democracy depend on depriving some of its people of the benefits of democracy? Eastern State Penitentiary represented in 1833 as a medieval castle from old Europe “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”– Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, 1865 In 1865, the United States government revised the Constitution to make slavery illegal. Six little words, however, change the whole meaning of the sentence: Forced confinement is illegal “except… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Bulldozer Urbanism

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As featured in: James Street Commons demolitions completed and proposed as of April 2021 Note: Visiting NJIT’s architecture school at age six and seeing students working there was what initially inspired my desire to study architecture. NJIT is an asset to Newark, and the school deserves the quality of campus architecture to match. I wrote and circulated this essay about NJIT’s under-performing campus design to members of NJIT and the Newark community. I am sharing it online, too, in the hope that future leaders of NJIT will collaborate with the community to create campus architecture that is culturally and historically… VIEW PUBLICATION

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The Privatization of Public Space in Lower Manhattan

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Map created by author in QGIS with planimetric data from NYC Open Data More than a specific threat to New York City, the decades-long erosion of public space is an existential threat to democracy. About 60% of Lower Manhattan’s surface area is listed as being public in some way, but only about 25% is totally unrestricted to the public in practice.* *Percentages are rough estimates from author, based on area south of Chambers Street with planimetric data from NYC Open Data. An exact estimate is impossible to arrive at because there is no single definition of public space. New York… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Architecture of Redemption?

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My master’s of architecture thesis at the University of Cambridge. This research explores the contradictions of solitary confinement at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. This prison experimented with prolonged solitary confinement in the 1830s to inspire the redemption of inmates. By analyzing Jeremy Bentham’s plans for the ideal panopticon prison, architect John Haviland’s designs for this specific prison, and visitor accounts of prison’s daily operations, my thesis examines the builders’ philosophical assumptions about utopia, architecture, and human nature. VIEW PUBLICATION

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Tour of desolate NYC during Coronavirus

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This NYC tour follows the route of Kenneth T. Jackson’s night tour. As a Columbia University undergraduate, I joined Jackson’s 2016 night tour of NYC by bike, from Harlem, down the spine of Manhattan, and over the bridge to Brooklyn. With a heavy heart, I gathered my courage on 30 March 2020 to revisit my beloved NYC, along this same route in the now sleeping city attacked by an invisible pathogen. The empty streets hit me with emotions in the misty and rainy weather – perhaps fitting for the city’s low morale. The tour route is drawn below.  View this… VIEW PUBLICATION

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A Medieval Mask on a Modern Prison

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This research presented at the University of Cambridge examines the Eastern State Penitentiary, designed by John Haviland in 1829. The study explores the complex relationship between its Gothic architecture and the goals of reform, analyzing the dual audience of inmates and visitors. This essay analyzes the symbolic and cultural reasons behind the fortress-like and medieval appearance of Eastern State Penitentiary in 19th-century Philadelphia. More than a purely random choice, the aesthetic qualities of Gothic reflect the beliefs and prejudices of the people who managed this prison of solitary confinement.

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What’s wrong with Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon?

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Animation and research as featured by Open Culture Postmodernist thinkers, like Michel Foucault, interpret Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, invented c.1790, as a symbol for surveillance and the modern surveillance state. This lecture is in two parts. I present a computer model of the panopticon, built according to Bentham’s instructions. I then identify design problems with the panopticon and with the symbolism people often give it. Related Projects – Computer animation of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon– View the panopticon in virtual reality– Explore about Eastern State Penitentiary, a building inspired by Bentham VIEW PUBLICATION

Virtual Reality Computer Model of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon

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My master’s thesis project at the University of Cambridge explores the architecture and power dynamics of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. Based on exceptionally detailed and accurate-to-the-inch measurements given in Bentham’s 18th-century letters and drawings, this project reconstructs his panopticon in virtual reality. Despite his claims of total oversight, design flaws undermine effective surveillance. The project highlights how Bentham’s vision anticipates future technologies that only now – three centuries later – fully realize his original ambitions of total control.

As featured by literary magazine Aeon: A World of Ideas VIEW PUBLICATION

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The Panopticon: a problem of definition

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A total institution may be defined as a place of residence and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life. Prisons serve as a clear example. Erving Goffman, Asylums 1. Introduction and Method The panopticon is now a theoretical design, a symbol of surveillance and state power. The building’s inventor, Jeremy Bentham, claims it is a perfect building and a total institution that cares for and controls all aspects of its inhabitants’ lives. No panopticon was built to Bentham’s… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Exhibition Design for the Old Essex County Jail

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Developed in collaboration with Newark Landmarks and the master’s program in historic preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. The abandoned old Essex County Jail in Newark was built in 1837 and is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This project transformed revitalization proposals by Columbia University’s historic preservation students into an exhibit and website. The exhibit highlight this jail’s social history and aimed to foster discussion on incarceration and urban regeneration.

Visit: OldEssexCountyJail.org VIEW PUBLICATION

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Architecture of Exclusion in Manhattan Chinatown

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This essay discusses the historical and contemporary challenges faced by the Chinese community in Manhattan’s Chinatown, highlighting the impact of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and ongoing racial discrimination. Despite systemic barriers, the community has shown resilience, maintaining its cultural identity amidst gentrification and urban development while navigating social and economic inequalities. VIEW PUBLICATION

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The Panopticon and Trouble in Utopia

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Ironically, the most unequal and dystopian of societies are often founded on utopian principles. Utopias, almost by their very nature, have undertones of conformism and oppression. From Plato’s Republic of strict castes and rampant censorship to Thomas More’s Utopia of puritanical laws and slavery, a utopia for the few is often a dystopia for the many. The question then arises: How do the benefactors of utopia confront its detractors? Utopia has several choices. It can maintain its monopoly on media and education, strangling nascent free thought before it grows into free action. Or it can physically punish and oppress free… VIEW PUBLICATION

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The Old Essex County Jail

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The old Essex Country Jail sits forlorn and abandoned amidst desolate parking lots and lifeless prefab boxes. In the so-called University Heights neighborhood, the jail is testimony to the past. Listed on the National Register of Historical Places, this 1837 structure is one of the oldest jails in America and the oldest civic structure in the city. Abandoned for over fifty years, no successful preservation efforts have materialized. The urban jungle of junk trees, vines, and garbage conquers the old fortress. The warden’s garden that zealous prisoners once pruned and weeded is now overrun with nature. Used syringes line the… VIEW PUBLICATION

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Petition against Panasonic Company’s Newark Offices

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I am saddened when I walk through downtown Newark. The corporate towers of the “Renaissance” Center ignore the very city that gave them millions of dollars in tax breaks. They erect austere metal fences and protect their towers with obedient security guards that threaten pedestrians with arrest. They are scared of Newark. When Panasonic decided to move their national headquarters to Newark, I hoped they would buck the trend of icy disrespect. However, I saw that their new building turned its back to the city like so many other lifeless behemoths downtown. I wrote the following petition, signed by Newark… VIEW PUBLICATION