There is a prison in recently liberated Syria, called Sednaya prison. This prison was designed with the intent to enact maximum oppression and cruelty on its inhabitants without taking into account potential life-safety issues prioritizing oppressing their occupants rather than ensuring they’d be able to evacuate to save their lives.  

the prison is compromised of an underground large bunker house designed with forced air ventilation which requires power to ensure occupants have access to oxygen. During a loss of power (both utility and generator), the security system is fail-secure, meaning that the doors remain locked and ppl die from lack of air.

This building was intentionally designed this way choosing to kill its occupants rather than have them escape  

It limits the quantity of means of egress such that the building dominates you. In a fire, if you’re within a large area, you have multiple means of egress such that if a means is blocked due to fire, you can have another exit route. 

This building was intentionally designed this way choosing to kill its occupants during a fire rather than have multiple potential failure points minimizing the risk of escape.

it doesn’t have a two stage fire alarm system that automatically unlocks doors. In buildings with a security system, if you have a locked exit door, you’re required to have the exit door unlocked automatically during a fire. In buildings with a security system that occupies prisoners, you have the fire alarm system have two stages, the first stage is when wardens are alerted that there’s a fire where they can then supervise an evacuation from the building. If that isn’t possible within a certain period of time, the building automatically goes into the second stage unlocking all exit doors such that prisoners can have an unsupervised evacuation. 

This prison was intentionally not designed this way choosing to kill its occupants during a fire rather than have a potential means of escape, even if that potential is almost zero. 

Currently, recently liberated Syria is trying to unlock this prison and has contacted the western German engineering firm to unlock it for them. It will take 6 days for them to arrive and unlock the doors. The prisoners will die from starvation by then.

It is unethical for an engineer to work on a project that makes these choices. Yet, somehow we allow buildings like these to be designed in the west.

Let’s make it illegal to design oppressive infrastructure for dictators