About - Designing Justice + Designing Spaces
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Mission & Vision

We are an architecture and design firm, real estate development firm, and non-profit working to end mass incarceration. Our mission and vision is to use architecture to address the racism, poverty, and unequal access to resources caused by the criminal legal system itself. Our work counters the traditional adversarial and punitive architecture of justice—courthouses, prisons, and jails—by creating spaces and buildings for restorative justice, community building, and housing for people coming out of incarceration.

 

Our Bold Idea

 

Our bold idea is that by transforming the spaces and places where we do justice, we can help our society make the shift from a punitive justice system to a restorative justice system. We hope to see peacemaking centers in every community in this country and end the age of mass incarceration.

 

Our Philosophy

 

Restorative justice seeks to restore and repair the people and relationships impacted by crime by understanding victims’ needs and holding offenders accountable in a way that meets these needs. It brings victims and offenders together for face-to-face meetings to discuss impacts, needs, and, when appropriate, ways to repair damages. Thousands of these processes operate in the US, Canada, and Europe, with many dialogues occurring in prisons when the offender is incarcerated and the crimes have been violent. Research suggests that these encounters contribute to increased empathy, improved restitution completion, and reduced offending.

 

Rather than focused on punishment, this philosophical approach to justice relies on values such as respect, participation, trust, accountability, and healing. Just as the principles and values of our punitive approach to justice manifest in our current justice architectural typologies, the philosophies of a restorative model can inform the design of justice spaces in a radically different way.

 

At DJDS our work is informed by these values and beliefs. Using the philosophy of restorative justice, we design physical environments in such a way that the environmental design supports the programs which occur within the space.

 

This concern for the design of the spaces in which restorative justice occurs is important, but not all that a truly restorative community requires. It also requires that we support the development of new types of housing and resource centers to address the root causes of mass incarceration and the decades of disinvestment, trauma, and harm done to our communities of color.

DJDS Products & Services

Architecture Services

Full Architecture Services

DJDS provides nonprofit service providers, community-based organizations, and local governments with affordable professional full architectural services. User engagement is the central feature of all assignments.

DJDS Institute

The DJDS Institute

The DJDS Institute is a think tank within DJDS that does Research & Evaluation, Concept Development, Advocacy & Communications, Toolkit(s), Public Speaking, Concept Development Projects, and Consulting.

Real Estate Development

Real Estate Development

DJDS’s real estate development services include purchasing and redeveloping properties, convening co-developer partnerships that build multi-use resource hubs within commercial projects, feasibility analysis for innovative housing models, and the ownership of real estate as an organization ourselves.

Concept Development Process

At DJDS, we are building pilot projects that are essential to move us toward a world without prisons and jails. As an interdisciplinary creative firm, we combine expertise in architecture, real estate development, community engagement, and advocacy to develop prototype projects that will serve as models for building typologies that support the transformation of our communities and the transformation of our justice system from punitive to restorative. As an initial step, we use this robust combination of expertise and services to support our partners in an approach we call the Concept Development Process. The result of the Concept Development Process is a package containing engagement and feasibility analyses, aesthetic designs, proposed programming, and financial modeling to move the project into Pre-Development. The technical expertise we use to accomplish our work is described below.

Our Concept Development Process Phases

Our Partners

At DJDS we are committed to the relationships that underpin every project. Through our rigorous partnership and project selection process we build relationships to anchor our solutionary and emergent processes. We primarily serve heroes and sheroes and survivors of the criminal justice system who provide services; community builders leading the movements for systems change; and public servants and civic leaders committed to the long road of prison abolition.

DJDS Partners - Heroes and Survivors

Heroes & Survivors

Systems-impacted men and women, and their communities of care, including low-income communities of color facing gentrification who want to plant a firmer stake in their community, be their best selves, and thrive.

DJDS Partners - Community Builders

Community Builders

High-performing nonprofits and social impact for-profits seeking infrastructure to deliver services to more stakeholders, build organizational identity, and support fundraising and development.

DJDS Partners - Public Sector

Public Sector

City agencies, Sheriff and Probation Departments, and District Attorneys looking to allocate a greater percentage of capital works funding to new types of infrastructure that support restorative programming.

Our Team

Deanna Van Buren, RA

Deanna Van Buren, RA

Co-Founder, Executive Director, Design Director

Shelley Davis Roberts

Shelley Davis Roberts

Studio Director

Maurice Robb, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP BD+C

Maurice Robb, AIA, NOMA, LEED AP BD+C

Project Manager / Project Architect

Tola Thomas, RA

Tola Thomas, RA

Architect & Design Studio Manager

Lucia Castello, RA

Lucia Castello, RA

Project Architect

Uzoma Idah

Uzoma Idah

Intermediate Architectural Associate

Athena Do

Athena Do

Intermediate Architectural Associate

Ramy Kim

Ramy Kim

Project Manager

Allison Wong

Allison Wong

Community Engagement Manager

Sabrina Siskind

Sabrina Siskind

Production Designer

Jasmine Brown

Jasmine Brown

Executive Assistant

Tim Wyckoff

Tim Wyckoff

Administrative Generalist

Jarrett Saunders

Jarrett Saunders

Director of Real Estate Development

Rachel Chung

Rachel Chung

Director of Advancement

Lorraine Nibut

Lorraine Nibut

Chief Operations Officer

Marc-Andrew Aguilera

Marc-Andrew Aguilera

Chief Financial Officer

Garrett Jacobs

Garrett Jacobs

Director of Research and Evaluation

Jean Paul Zapata

Jean Paul Zapata

Director of Communications

Board Members

Deanna Van Buren

Deanna Van Buren

Director at Large

Executive Director and Design Director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces

Raphael Sperry

Raphael Sperry

Board President

Associate at Arup 

Barb Toews, PhD

Barb Toews, PhD

Board Secretary

Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at University of Washington Tacoma

Christine Johnson

Christine Johnson

Board Treasurer

Public finance professional and former San Francisco Planning Commissioner

James Stockard

James Stockard

Director at Large

Curator of the Loeb Fellowship and Lecturer of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University

Andrea James

Andrea James

Board Member

Executive Director of The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls