Purpose and Objectives of the Competition
The absence of detention establishments adapted to minors in several Swiss cantons as well as the requirements of international conventions, has made necessary an establishment for the detention of juvenile delinquents. Because of its central location in French-speaking Switzerland, a Latin concordat has attributed to the Canton of Vaud the onus of establishing and using an intercantonal establishment of fifty places. After a detailed analysis of various sites, Palézieux-Gare has been selected. It is indeed the site corresponding best to the general objectives that have been fixed.
The future center will have the mission to detain minors in a closed and secured frame whilst providing them with supervision characterized by its educational content, adapted to the personality of each one and bringing to the minor an appropriate supervision frame to prepare them for their social integration after their liberation.
Building a detention center is first and foremost about building an enclosing wall. This unbridgeable wall is the limit between the closed world of the Center and its rural and urban surroundings. Imagining the surrounding wall is to define the balance between what is inside and what is outside, it is to define the “transparency” which allows those within a glimpse of the distance, and for the population, not to be able to take a hand in what is going on inside. Heavy security measures on the outside allow emphasizing the educational character of the detention inside, where human relationships are given more weight than elements of security.
The organizers of the competition have expected competitors to submit innovative, avantgardist projects, respectful of the landscape and of sustainable development, for a contemporary answer to the needs of our society.
