Will Alsop is never very far away from controversy.

The architect, who once estimated only 10 per cent of his designs had actually been built, is the man who said in all seriousness that Barnsley could be turned into a Tuscan hill village, who unveiled a blueprint for a Supercity stretching along the M62 and who, three years ago, saw his plans for the Cloud Building in Liverpool shelved amid rising costs.

Given his past, when Rideout, an organisation which promotes the arts within the criminal justice system, asked him to design a prison for the 21st-century they knew the result was unlikely to be to everyone's tastes – and Alsop didn't disappoint.

"The first thing I did was spend quite a lot of time in Leicester's Gartree prison, which is one of the main centres for those sentenced to life," he says. "We held a number of quite long workshops with the prisoners and the guards. Initially, they saw it as just an opportunity to moan about everything they didn't like, but that's almost part of the process. You have to go through that stage to get to the point where they feel able to think of practical changes which could be made."

Having been inundated with ideas, Alsop went back to his office and some months later emerged with the blueprints for a prison called HMS Paterson, named after the penal reformer Alexander Paterson.

While stories of inmates enjoying the kind of life of luxury on the inside that they could never hope to achieve on the outside regularly hit the headlines, Alsop, who is also behind the current redevelopment of Bradford, is unrepentant about his recommendations to give inmates the key to their own cell and replace the traditional high perimeter fence with something altogether more gentle.

"Where you create cities where people feel engaged and involved, they are actually economically and socially more successful," he says, while admitting he is prepared for what he calls the "Daily Mail" reaction. "Why should prisons be any different? Prisons are in effect small towns and, ideally, they should give their inhabitants a sense of self-respect.

"It's fine for people to say we should lock offenders up and throw away the key, but that kind of attitude doesn't help address the current problems in our prisons, which are overcrowded and which are failing when it comes to repeat offending. We have to look at it from a different perspective."

In Alsop's designs, which will go on display in Wakefield as part of Architecture Week next month, the harsh lines of traditional prisons are replaced by curved glass buildings set in large green spaces and include impressive sports facilities, study areas and communal gardens. It's less Armley Prison and more university campus.

"The punishment part of being sent to prison is being separated from your family, of being removed from society, but if the system has any chance of working, rehabilitation has to start on the first day that they go in," he says.

"One of the things which really struck me was the number of cells in each block. There were about 100, which is totally unworkable from a staffing point of view and quite intimidating.

"One of the main suggestions is to reduce that to between 12 and 16. Within this, there would be a secure external area and the prisoners would also have the key to their own cell so that if they wanted to be away from the other prisoners they could lock themselves up."

Handing out keys to prisoners has inevitably provoked some raised eyebrows from within the prison service, but Alsop insists the current system where inmates are put to work "making socks nobody wants" has to be turned on its head and that he just might be the man to do it.

"There are always going to be some people who don't want to be helped, but there are many others who could be doing something useful while they are serving their sentence, like learning a trade," he says.

"Many prisoners don't have qualifications, they often struggle to read and write and, if prison is to be about rehabilitation, education has to be at its heart.

"However, while those who work in prisons do their best, there often there isn't anywhere specifically set aside for study, and the prisoners aren't allowed computers because the authorities are worried about them using email to contact people they shouldn't, or accessing inappropriate websites.

"I think everyone would agree that it's a valid concern, but there are ways around it. It is possible to give them access to a limited number of sites and to put in place agreed lists for email accounts. It's about thinking creatively."

There are no plans as yet to turn Alsop's blueprint into a reality, but with his work being exhibited alongside that of artist Shona Illingworth, it will at least highlight the future of British prisons, a subject which has become a political hot potato in recent years.

"We have to show that prison is not some vicious cycle," he says. "That's why I would want to replace the perimeter wall with a ring of lower, useful buildings like recording studios and a gymnasium, which could be shared with the public.

"In that way it becomes a halfway house between the prison and the outside world and the message is clear for the inmates: there is an exit strategy, not over the walls, but by learning to become a useful member of society."


Creative Prison Exhibition, Beam Gallery, Wakefield Orangery, June 15 to 22. 01924 215550. For a full list of events visit www.architectureweek.org.uk