An In-between Place

The Opposite of a Prison

In our opinion, pre-deportation detention centres should no longer be architectural non-places or cheap containers. The people staying there also have a right to live in dignity. People detained while awaiting deportation have not committed a criminal offence – they are merely in the country without papers. Yet especially in Vienna they are still held in dismal 18th- and 19th-century police prisons like criminal offenders, often in unbearable conditions.

Rooms with a View

The people living here have a view of the mountains and a small river and they can withdraw to common rooms or to small residential courtyards where amelanchier trees blossom. The cells – we call them rooms – look nothing like a prison. The walls are clad with maritime pine – a material that retains its cosy appearance even when damaged. Instead of bars we installed full-height fixed glazing equipped with ventilation flaps that are only ten centimetres wide. The administrative wing functions as a wall but also allows people outside to see into the detention centre.

A More Equal Relationship

However, when planning the 10,000 m² complex we didn’t only have the detainees in mind but also the people who work there and look after them.

The staff should not be sealed off from the detainees, they ought to be in daily contact with them. The people held at the centre are in detention but they also receive counselling and protection. Staff should see them not as mere numbers but as citizens who are guarded before they are sent away into an uncertain future. And this is the letter we wrote to the critics of the project.