By C1 Staff
MITCHELLVILLE, Iowa — Architecture students are currently working on creating a ‘decompression area’ for prison staff, in order to allow staff members to have a safe place to take a break and visit with each other when work shifts are completed.
The Des Moines Register reports that the outdoor project is being completed by nine Iowa State University architecture students and their professor Julie Stevens.
They built outdoor classrooms for inmates held at the prison last year.
The idea for the ‘decompression area’ came after Stevens witnessed staff members lingering in the parking lot of the facility, chatting with coworkers, while she and her students were working on the classrooms.
“They’d stand there for 45 minutes to just decompress and chat – so they wouldn’t have to take the day’s stressors home with them,” she said.
A memorial garden in front of the administration building will include a water feature to honor a past warden and a magnolia tree to reflect one removed on the old campus. A tree-lined path will lead from the staff entrance sidewalk to a patio and windbreak on the north side of the building.
In addition, a three-tired, 30-by-40 patio will feature a variety of small group and private seating areas, a built-in grill and a vegetative privacy wall of clematis. It will also feature leaning walls.
Funding from the project has come from donations and grants, discounted materials and shared and borrowed equipment from both the state facility and local contractors.
The university received a grant of $76,000 from the Mitchellville prison to cover the student’s pay, as they are working as paid interns, as well as administration costs.