Metropolis Magazine

Prison design is about as unglamorous as architecture can get. Corrections agencies want the cheapest cage they can buy; communities want the monstrosities out of sight. Innovation has typically meant anything that will cut costs -- for instance, casting an entire prefabricated cell, from the bed frame to the toilet, as a single piece of low-grade concrete. But when British nonprofit Rideout (Creative Arts for Rehabilitation) approached the architect Will Alsop about designing a concept prison -- from the inside… more

Cities have always been about change. And as we plunge deeper into the millennium, we may now be witnessing the emergence of a new kind of urban place, populated largely by nonfamilies and the nomadic rich. This "ephemeral city" might become the prototype for advanced countries in the twenty-first century. San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and parts of New York already serve as ephemeral cities. Unlike the imperial capital, which administered a vast empire and extracted riches from it, or… more