Corporate Ethics and the Architecture of Asylum

Jennifer Ferng is Senior Lecturer and B.DesArch (honours) M.Arch Program Director at the University of Sydney. Her research examines environmental and humanitarian histories across Europe, Asia, and Oceania focusing on climate change, sustainability, forced displacement, and migrations. She has co-edited three books namely Crafting Enlightenment: Artisanal Histories and Transnational Networks (Liverpool/Voltaire Foundation, 2021), Drawing Climate: Visualising Invisible Elements of Architecture (Birkhäuser, 2021), and Land Air Sea: Architecture and Environment in the Early Modern Era (Brill, 2023). Her recent publications and works include a special issue of Future Anterior on the decarbonisation of heritage buildings in the Asia Pacific and a design exhibition titled ‘Monumental Imaginaries: Complexity and Contradiction in the Hunter Region’ (2024) sponsored by the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) and University of Edinburgh.

"For anyone who wants to truly understand how private companies have come to control every aspect of the lives of those caught up in Australia’s offshore detention regime, Jennifer Ferng’s book is a must read. With meticulous research into the sordid tale of contracts, flowing from one multinational to the next, she demonstrates how the damaging impact of government policies are not an accident, they are part of the design."Dr Graham Thom, Advocacy Coordinator, Refugee Council of Australia."This ambitious and pioneering study offers a theoretically astute and courageous exposition of the outsourcing of offshore detention infrastructure to profit-driven multinational corporations. It highlights the design profession's persistent failure to engage with these spaces or insist on humane alternatives. Using dynamic digital media archives to expand the horizon of architectural research, it penetrates the opacity of a shameful national legacy.”Anoma Pieris, Professor of Architecture, The University of Melbourne.

• List of acronyms and abbreviationsList of figuresAcknowledgmentsChapter 1. Introduction - Managing Pacific environmentsChapter 2. Offshore operationsChapter 3. Precarious livesChapter 4. Caring for health and wealthChapter 5. Corporate sovereignsChapter 6. Picturing asylum and its counter archivesBibliographyAppendicesIndex