Spatial analysis of prisons and re-evaluating the prisons in this context

Prisons have spatial organizations whose main functions are observing, controlling, cutting off the contact between the internal and external world. In this sense, they are different from other building types. Choices of the prisoners do not have any effect on their design processes. When it is looked at a jail from the external world, most people are terrified of even walking in front of it or entering in it. This situation affects prisons' forms, locations, physical, psychological and sociological relations with the city and people who are placed in it. Taking above aspects and comfort vectors like usability, necessity, capacity, etc. into consideration, some prisons have lost their main functions. Those prisons have been re-evaluated and served the public from different perspectives. Prisons that are transformed to public buildings may come from several different physical types, for instances: educational, cultural, accommodation, etc. In contrast to these physical types, prisons consist of painful memories and lots of exemplary experiences that are never lost associated with their main features. Due to the fact that cultural type would reflect most prisons' true-life memories to public and city, it could be chosen as the most appropriate re-evaluating mechanism. There are some examples that are examined in the study, coming from Turkey and world's well-known places regarding cultural functions in terms of crime, prisoner and prison as an architectural building; relations between prisons and city, prisons and people live in the city. Main focus of this study reveals whether there are common criteria exist or determined while examples of prisons that are re-evaluated in the light of cultural functions. During the investigation comparing of different prison types to each other will reveal the common typological, functional and morphological characteristics, which will led to the occurrence of a model for future interferences. Keywords: Prison, jail, functional changes, cultural functions