The AJ's report last week on architecture students at the University of Kent being asked to design a torture device has provoked heated debate. Here, the AJ asks the question: Should architecture students be asked to design torture devices?

No to designing torture devices

Surely this is an exercise in tautology? Architecture students being asked to design a tool to drain the very last essence of the human soul, to the point of total submission; a device to push man to the verge of madness by being subject to cross-questioning by people who are, in reality, just going through the motions of questioning, but have, in reality, already decided your fate....

Ralph Kent, Cardiff

Congratulations to the lone brave refusenik, who had the courage to refuse to undertake this appalling design project. But what hope for the others? Perhaps they thought they were just carrying out their orders. But then so were the students who bowed to authority in the infamous Milgram experiment at Yale in 1961.
On seeing Adolf Eichmann in the dock in Jerusalem in 1961, Hannah Arendt coined the phrase, 'the banality of evil'. This project reveals the banality of architectural education, or what passes for it.
I taught at Canterbury for 22 years, both in the Diploma School and as course leader in the Interdisciplinary MA in Art & Architecture at what was then Canterbury College of Art and Kent Institute of Art and Design. The school had an international reputation for its great students.
I cannot understand the logic of asking students to design this obscene contraption even though the end result will be a building for Amnesty International.
There must be better ways to educate students.

Sam Webb, Canterbury

Who said that there was such a thing as 'moral' architecture. 'Crank' is too kind a word for those who thought torture was a suitable case for treatment.

Nicholas Xenakis, London

Yes to designing torture devices

We are the students at the University of Kent's School of Architecture who were asked to design the torture device. This brief was only a fraction of our term's work, the ultimate aim of which is to design a building for Amnesty International.
Only by engaging in contemporary debate could our minds be sharpened in preparation for this task.
We are now in a better position to empathise with the victims of torture and to inform our designs
for Amnesty International.
We believe that if architecture should be controversial at any stage it is during our education.
This brief in particular was open to individual interpretation and it was made clear that any student could opt out of the project. However, all but one student decided that the project was, while provocative, also useful and worthwhile – the eventual outcome outweighed any initial misgivings. The one student who opted out was given, and completed, an alternative brief as preparation for the next phase of the project.

Dimitris Spiliotopolos, Dimitris Tsarouchas, Edward Dunderdale, Joel Jenkins, Josh Neal, Loukia Ventoura, Margarita Vervele, Neil Davies, Neil King, Nina Ivanova, Richard Kirby, Tatiana Lampridi, Stage 4 M Arch Students, University of Kent

I am the student who objected to making a torture device. I would like to state that I agree unequivocally with our tutor's intentions in the brief.
This exercise was intended to lead us into a project to design a headquarters for Amnesty International.
My objection to designing a torture device led onto a rational and stimulating debate between myself and my tutor, Mike Richards. The consequence of this discussion was that I was allowed to pursue the project differently.
Although I still object to a brief about designing a torture implement, this project has had a positive consequence for the students. To paraphrase one of my colleagues at the crit: 'If any of us were blasé about torture before the project, we're not now'.
This project has forced us to empathise on a very personal scale with the reason why Amnesty International exists – to alleviate the suffering caused by human-rights abuses.

Neil Davies, University of Kent

The AJ has chosen to focus only on the design of a torture device, omitting reference to its
subsequent purpose: to be disabled by an antidote device.
The project was about developing a personal position. The brief you published was passed to a member of the public, a constituency for which it was not written.
This project has been the subject of blind-peer-review selection, presentation, and publication at national and international conferences.
All students respected the project's intentions, and all believe it was justified and had a very sound ethical foundation.

Michael Richards, programme director, M Arch, University of Kent