Echo Yard
Location
San Diego, CA
timeline
2025—Ongoing
Role
Collaborator
Services
More Info
Echo Yard is a greenspace initiative at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility that reimagines a traditional prison yard as a restorative landscape shaped through collaboration with incarcerated residents, their advocates, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The project explores how design can improve daily life, well-being, and dignity within correctional environments while demonstrating the role of landscape and public space in supporting rehabilitation. Historically, prison yards are designed primarily for surveillance, circulation, and recreation within rigid institutional frameworks. Echo Yard challenges this model by introducing a park-like environment that prioritizes greenery, shade, gathering spaces, and areas for reflection. Through a participatory design process, incarcerated residents have contributed ideas and feedback that directly shape the vision for the yard, ensuring the project responds to lived experience and everyday use.
Urban + Systems
Planning + Policy
Building + Interior
Landscape Architecture
The project is being implemented in two phases. Phase 1, currently approved, focuses on foundational improvements that seating areas, planting areas, and core recreation amenities while improving circulation and environmental comfort. These initial interventions begin transforming the yard into a more humane and welcoming space that supports physical activity, social interaction, and access to nature. Phase 2, currently under review, builds upon this foundation by introducing sculptural elements, shaded structures, trees, and reflective spaces that deepen the yard’s identity as a restorative landscape. Together, the phases create a model for how correctional facilities can incorporate thoughtful design to foster resilience, mental well-being, and community within highly constrained environments. Echo Yard demonstrates how design can operate as a form of civic infrastructure—even in places rarely considered part of the public realm. By centering collaboration, dignity, and environmental quality, the project offers a replicable framework for rethinking outdoor spaces across correctional systems. This model is being explored for other yards at Donovan.
