Blurring Boundaries

Abstract

Juvenile offenders in Pakistan are often tried in court as adults. There is a lack of detention centers for them, and almost no efforts for their rehabilitation. Young offenders often end up with adult punishments, long sentences and no shot at retribution or being reintegrated into society. This thesis aims to design a detention center for these juvenile offenders that enables proper documentation and boarding and provides an opportunity for rehabilitation through education, physical and mental health treatments, and vocational training. The goal is to help the children unlearn their detrimental behaviors and enable them to enter society as a positively contributing member when they walk out of incarceration. Architecture is used to capture unbound volumes by composing physical boundaries as spaces of function and experience. Typically, these spaces are made to respond to their surroundings and the people that inhabit them, but what happens when they do not? What happens when people are confined to spaces unsuited to their own selves? What if it is not just volumes that are being bound, but human lives as well? The thesis focuses on promoting the building of a community through which collective healing could take place. It aims to remove both physical and societal boundaries for juvenile offenders that may isolated from the world. It intends to design a place will serve as a pivotal point in their lives where they leave their traumas behind and embrace rehabilitation.