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  1. Civic
  2. New Prison in Nuuk, Greenland
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  • CNN Architecture

New Prison in Nuuk designed to interact with the beautifully rugged Greenlandic landscape

For more than 50 years, convicts in Greenland had to serve “a double sentence” – both the actual prison sentence and the fact of being sent far away from their home country, family and culture to prisons in Denmark. The new prison in Nuuk paves the way for entirely new opportunities for the social rehabilitation of the inmates.

The contrast between tough and beautiful is a recurrent theme in the project, in which openness, light and vision, security, overview and flexibility are key, valuable words in terms of the design. The project interacts with the uniquely scenic area, while supporting the Prison Service’s fundamental focus on the balance between punishment and rehabilitation. Based on the understanding that physical environment plays a significant role in human behaviour and the impetus for development and cooperation, everyone wanted a project, which supports and contains these parameters for both inmates and prison staff with qualities to promote rehabilitation with a focus on preventing physical and mental violence.

FRIIS & MOLTKE Architetcs have worked on every facet of the building with a humanistic approach. When we speak the language of humanism, our encounter with a facility as an institution is a brutal one. It is a field of experience, which demanded a profound analysis of the process and a platform of development, prior to the creation of a prison based on compassion and respect for individuals and life. Another priority was to create conditions for a good physical and mental working environment for the staff.

Winner of WAN Awards - Future Projects 2017.

View project info
Location

Nuuk, Greenland

Client

The Ministry of Justice, the Danish Prison and Probation Service

Size

8.387 m²

Architect

FRIIS & MOLTKE Architects, schmidt hammer lassen architects

Landscape architect

Møller & Grønborg

Engineer

Rambøll

Competition

2013

Prize

1. price in competition

Indhold1
Access to daylight and view og the landscape from the facility. 
Indhold4
The landscape and the individual. 
Indhold2
Indhold 2
Indhold5
Indhold6

CNN Architecture / Article

Humane prison to bring Greenland's most dangerous criminals home

Ny Anstalt prison is under construction in Nuuk, Greenland. Its architects, Danish firms FRIIS & MOLTKE and Schmidt, Hammer Lassen, have designed a humane penitentiary that opereates like a small village, allowing inmates to lead a life that´s as normal as possible. Studies show that once released, inmates from humane prisons have a greater change of succesful reintegration into society, with lower rates of re-offending.

The article is written for CNN, by Sarah Lazarus,

Read the article

CNN Architecture

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