CASE STUDIES
Restorative Justice
* For image references, please scroll to the bottom of the page.
Author of case study: Marcela Torres
Geopolitical location of space:
Carrera 4a No. 23-28
Bogotá, Cundinamarca
Extant? Yes
Architect:
Fundación Horizontal
La Casita has been operating since 2017.
La Casita is the first restorative justice centre for young people in Colombia, with a space dedicated specifically for restorative justice purposes. The centre was the result of a collaboration between the Secretariat of Security of Bogotá, the organisation ‘Convivencia y Justicia’, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The space is also open to process cases selected by the Attorney General’s Office, involving young people in the city.
Yes, restorative justice processes and encounters between young offenders and other actors take place onsite.
Yes, the renovation of the interior space was adapted to foster safe dialogues, both one-one-one and collective encounters.
Young offenders who live in Bogotá and have been invited to be part of a restorative justice process.
The site is a public house that belongs to the local municipal government. The space has specific working hours and it is closed at night.
La Casita was designed with the objective of creating a welcoming space for all citizens. Although the initiative was led by the local government of Bogotá, the façade renovation and interior design were done in such a way as to avoid creating an institutional environment.
‘Casita’ is the Spanish word for little house.
La Casita occupies the second floor of a traditional house in the centre of Bogotá. The façade and the interior were redesigned to create a welcoming space and safe dialogue site for processes of restorative justice that involve young offenders. The design, which was created by Fundación Horizontal (a design collective from Bogotá), is centred on a geometrically-shaped pedagogical devices that enable dialogue between survivors and offenders. For Fundación Horizontal, designing for restorative practices should be guided by an understanding that spaces have to be adaptable to the different ways people occupy and live in their environments. Since restorative processes are dynamic and unique to each case, spatial designs should accommodate those singularities.
Through the use of curtains to modify the interior spaces of dialogue, the design aimed to provide opportunities to rethink and organise the users’ experience. The materiality of the objects and the use of light and sound allowed the space to be manipulated according to the varied perspectives and contributions of the participants. “The system is intended to create ever-changing dynamics and atmospheres” (Alcaldía de Bogotá, 2019).
From a design perspective, the curtains are particularly useful because they can be easily manipulated by the users, and additionally, they provide storage efficiency in a limited space. In their approach, Fundación Horizontal’s design team was interested in exploring how physical spaces condition individuals and their activities. Accordingly, they decided to create a pedagogical exercise, in which the curtain rails became a tool for configuring individual spaces that were used for meetings between the participating youth and the program facilitators.
Likewise, the furniture used in the space required the same flexibility to facilitate the dynamics of reconciliation, discussion, and sharing. The furnishings as well as the spaces needed to be flexible to respond to the changes in the dynamics of the restorative process. La Casita became an exhibition space where participants could make their experiences visible to a broader audience. “A space that serves for the creation, compilation, exhibition and dissemination of narratives and the construction of memory”(Alcaldía de Bogotá, 2019).
The design also includes three pedagogical artefacts that help to enrich the individual restorative exercises and collective moments of reflection. The artefacts also serve to open the doors of La Casita, broadening its scope of activities to include other citizens and create mechanisms that foster empathy and co-responsibility between city residents and the beneficiaries of the program.
La Casita was the first dedicated space centred on dialogue and active listening in the city of Bogotá, and the first house for restorative justice in Colombia. It became the pilot program for a national model that focused on youth responsibility with an objective of restoration (Tiempo, 2017). The space is currently used for workshops with social workers and psychologists, to achieve a purpose of social reintegration.
The design process was the result of an interdisciplinary group project that included designers, artists, psychologists, young offenders, and organisations such as Bogotá’s Secretariat of Security, Cohabitation, Fundación Horizontal, and Estudio Montenegro architects. The proposed modification of the space aimed to facilitate practices of reflection through spatial reconfiguration. The functions of the different spaces are aimed to support the various dynamics that take place in the house, including activities of diverse scales such as individual, dual or group interactions.
The project proposed three different communication pedagogies: (1) building recognition through narratives; (2) fostering reparation through the sharing of oral testimonies; and (3) individual social projection. These three tactics were represented by physical, mobile structures that enabled participants to carry out the proposed activities. For the design of these pedagogical tools, Indigenous knowledge was used as a guide, particularly in the use of narratives for reparation, and the association of specific geometrical shapes for certain healing practices.
is an author, speaker, columnist, and podcaster in the fields of architecture and decorative arts. She is completing her MA in Art History at Concordia University, Montréal, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce with a major in Marketing from John Molson School of Business. She studied Industrial Psychology in Los Angeles, California. Sicotte is the author of two published books on design (2015, 2018) published by Les Éditions Cardinal.
is a Colombian PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. She has a background in architectural design and community activism and holds a master’s degree in Building and Urban Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, England. Her interests focus on socially-engaged art, social movements, collaborative activism in post-conflict scenarios, collectively-produced art, and art produced in relation to the built environment.
is a PhD candidate in Humanities at Concordia University. His research focuses on spatial agency, social aesthetics, youth narratives, and graphic representations of urban memory. He has published on the relationship between children, play, and public space in Cartagena, Colombia. He has also worked as an editor on literary projects, including Territorio Fértil, which received the María Nelly Murillo Hinestroza award for Afro-Colombian literature.
is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Architectures of Spatial Justice (Tier 2) at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture at McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada. Her research interests include low-income housing and participatory design, civil protest and urban design, and campus landscapes and race. Her publications include the co-edited book, Orienting Istanbul (2010) and solo-authored book, Istanbul Open City (2018).
is an artist and a professor of Art History at Concordia University. Her work focuses on women and the history of the built environment, urban landscapes, research-creation, and oral history. She has published on the spatial history of the suffrage movement, public art, gardens, and the politics of urban change. In addition to her research on the spaces of restorative and transitional justice, she is leading an oral history project on the urban memories of diverse Montrealers.
is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Concordia University, Montreal (Quebec, Canada). He is also the second co-director of Concordia’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. His latest publications explore listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory. For instance, see ‘Facilitating voicing and listening in the context of post-conflict performances of memory. The Colombian scenario.’ In: De Nardi, S., Orange, H., et al. Routledge Handbook of Memoryscapes. Routledge: London. (2019), and his article ‘Not being able to speak is torture: performing listening to painful narratives’. International Journal of Transitional Justice, Special Issue Creative Approaches to Transitional Justice: Contributions of Arts and Culture. (March, 2020)
