FREEDOM TO, FREEDOM FROM

Freedom to, Freedom from is a proposal for the adaptation of the Lincoln Heights prison and 3rd place winner or the 2024 USC Design Guild Charrette competition. Teams were tasked with designing a mixed-use adaptive proposal for the existing prison that engaged the idea of the American Dream. 

In partnership with Ethan Santana and Sakiko Tanaka, our proposal takes Norman Rockwell’s 4 Freedoms wartime paintings as a springboard for a modern reinvestigation of the American Dream. It foregrounds questions of: To whom was the American Dream promised? Were these promises grounded in truth or farce? We project our own contemporary freedoms to the Lincoln Heights prison: Freedom of play  and opportunity, freedom from inequity and isolation, in order to liberate the site in its next use. We proposed the reuse of the central corridor as a commercial arcade with above residential space as well as the addition of a stop on LA’s A-Line. Furthermore, a sunken park connects formerly isolated parts of the site, taking a place of imprisonment, isolation and punishment, redeemed as the site for a new more equitable American Dream to aspire to.