Our design for this space includes exhibits, visualizations and story-telling components, and draws upon the disciplines of architecture, journalism, art, psychology, education, design and more. The goal of the initiative is to create a networked public space that will actively engage, and be genuinely accessible to, a heterogeneous population of visitors, including resident scientists and community members alike.

Linking Prisoner Reentry to Community Rebuilding in Post-Katrina New Orleans:
In the summer of 2006 SIDL received a grant to further their work in Justice Mapping into a real world application at an architectural scale. A group of five graduate students received fellowships to travel to New Orleans with Professor Kurgan to come up with a vision plan for a high incarceration neighborhood in New Orleans from the perspective of Justice Reinvestment. This work was continued by 2nd year architecture students in the studio in the Spring of 2007. We gave a presentation to City Council, June 12th 2007. Final documentation of this work was published in 2009.  

Exhibition and Scenario Planning workshop held at the Architectural League of New York.

Laura Kurgan worked with the Department of Probation in New York City and the Mayor’s Office of Operations, and designed a participatory process which over a period of three months resulted in a report which proposed recommendations for the redesign of probation waiting rooms – processes and design - across New York City. As public places of service in New York City, the DOP “waiting rooms” -- to be redesigned as Resource Hubs -- will become a visible example of changes being made agency-wide to improve the culture of probation and its city-wide infrastructure, policies and processes -- physical and systemic.