Designing Justice and Designing Spaces

Designing Justice + Designing Spaces is an Oakland-based nonprofit architecture and real estate development firm with a mission to end mass incarceration and structural inequity. They do this by building infrastructure that addresses its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. With a specific expertise in evidence-based design research and designing for peacemaking and reparation, they are able to engage 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, and they do so through the creation of new prototypes such as peacemaking centers, transitional housing, and mobile villages.