From Brain to Home: Radically Rethinking Prison Design and Architecture with Dr. Yvonne Jewkes, Part 2

When criminologist and writer Dr. Yvonne Jewkes sat down with Ashley Gould for a deeply personal episode of On the Table, what unfolded was a conversation about loss, memory, and the transformative potential of space. Part memoir, part meditation, this episode invites us to reconsider not just the walls around us, but the quiet architecture of our inner lives.

Here are a few takeaways that stayed with us:

Rebuilding is a Ritual of Reclamation

After the end of a decades-long relationship, Dr. Jewkes found herself facing the shell of a dilapidated  home. Rather than walk away, she chose to stay—and to begin again.

But this wasn’t just a renovation of bricks and beams. It was a reclaiming of identity. She listened closely to what the house had to say—its history, its silences, its scars—and allowed it to guide her forward.

“I didn’t want to erase what had been there,” she reflects. “I wanted to preserve the memory… and also allow myself to imagine a future.”

The rebuilding became an act of grief and imagination in equal measure. It reminds us that home, like healing, is not about erasing the past—it’s about layering the present gently on top of it.

Our Spaces Are Extensions of Self

Dr. Jewkes’ approach to design is deeply intuitive—each decision guided less by aesthetic trends and more by feeling. What do I need to feel safe? What light do I want to wake up to? What materials feel honest?

In a world that often values speed and efficiency, this kind of attentiveness is radical. And it’s something we at Âme Atendre deeply believe: that the spaces we dwell in are a reflection of what we value. Slowness. Intention. Connection. Beauty that invites, rather than impresses.

“I didn’t want perfection,” she says. “I wanted a home that felt lived in… real.”

Design Can Heal — and Harm

In part two of the episode, the conversation widens from personal healing to collective transformation. As one of the world’s leading experts on prison architecture, Dr. Jewkes shares how the environments we design—especially institutional ones—impact the people within them.

She speaks powerfully about HMP Grendon, a therapeutic prison in the UK, where community, conversation, and human dignity are central to the architecture. Here, space doesn’t punish—it invites reflection and growth.

“You can’t change people without changing the environment. Design carries intention.”

It’s a profound reminder that beauty isn’t surface—it’s structural. And that the ethics of how we build ripple out into how we live.

Objects as Anchors

In the final part of the episode, Dr. Jewkes shares the objects in her home that carry the most meaning: a bracelet passed down through generations of women, a cyanotype gifted by a friend. These are not just things—they are touchstones. Quiet witnesses to transformation.

They echo what we at Âme Atendre hold dear: that beauty is not just visual, but emotional. That our homes are made not only of furniture and color palettes, but of memory, inheritance, and presence.

 Hope is a Form of Design

Ultimately, this episode is about more than home renovation. It’s about how we piece ourselves back together when life falls apart. How we make space—for grief, for reinvention, for joy.

Dr. Jewkes’ story offers a blueprint not just for rebuilding a house, but for reimagining the life within it. With patience. With reverence. With hope.