Paste your essay in here…The Age of Enlightenment, which spanned a “long 18th century”, marked the radical reorientation of European philosophy; along with it came a shift in the notion of power, from “sovereign” to “disciplinary”. In Foucauldian terms, “sovereign” power refers to the use of violence and dramatic shows of force as a public spectacle; “disciplinary” power, on the other hand, alludes to the use of surveillance as a form of control, to train and improve the individual through promoting self-control and discipline by putting them under constant surveillance. Hence, social reform concerning humanitarian ethics and the image of the society changed views on punishment methods, as protests were made against public executions in a bid to enforce ‘humanity’ as something to be respected. Such a reform was underpinned by the proliferation of capitalism, increased economic pressure; people were more concerned over their safety, as standard of living and population rose with an increase in general wealth and property, which led to the demand for a constant need for security. The role of prisons radically changed, hence the change in their design. Most reformers believed that a prison regime ought to be a safe, stringent and rigorous experience of controlled discipline for the good of both the city and the individual – prisoners would be protected and undergo expiation and atonement, be taught valuable skill sets that will anchor them to society and effectively reduce the tendency for them to recommit crimes, at the same time enabling the city to be cleansed from cruel and degrading spectacles while securing good order in a more urban and commercially oriented society.
Prior to the use of confinement in a prison as punishment, sovereign power was lauded, and the ceremonial torture of prisoners was regarded as a spectacle to be consumed by the public as a form of deterrence against crime. As such, the monarch had power over people and their bodies, where the body was the major target of penal repression which was expressed by inflicting direct punishment as a means of asserting control. However, such practices were abolished upon new theories of law and crime along with moral and political concerns surfaced, gave rise to analyzing the process of ‘humanization’ which led to a new kind of punishment, although still in the form of a public spectacle. Prisoners were exhibited by being tasked public works to contribute back to society, such as cleaning city streets and highway maintenance, while wearing prison outfits in chains along with their exposed shaven heads. Apart from being under constant supervision by armed keepers while they ‘performed’ their service, the prisoners were too in the range of view of the public – it was through the presence of both direct and lateral surveillance that enabled control over the body, which then controlled behaviour and the mind.
Despite such measures to maintain ‘humanity’, the spectacle of having prisoners in plain sight of the public eventually got criticized as ‘a disgusting scene’, and punishment gradually ceased to be a spectacle. Subsequently, there was an increasing awareness of the need for a more orderly and decent society, alongside a sense of benevolence and compassion, which was seen as a national characteristic to be proudly upheld. Hopes of the reformers were then more likely to be pinned on the reformative potential of a prison rather than the gruesome spectacle of physical punishment. Hence, the prison was conceived to cleanse the image of both the city and its people, through the idea of surveillance: the control and identification of individuals, regulation of movements, activity and effectiveness through a rigorous rigid regulated set of spaces. However, early prison conditions were not properly regulated, according John Howard, a prison reformer, described them as old buildings that are dirty and offensive without proper lighting and water, little attention was paid in the separation of gender and corruption among prison keepers who spent county allowance on whisky instead of bread. He then advocated that prisons were to follow four key concepts in order for maximum efficiency:
Provision of a structurally secure, roomy and sanitary environment
Shift from private profit maker to a salaried servant of the public authority
All prisoners to be subjected to a reformatory regime of diet, work and religious exercises
Systematic inspection of the entire prison by an outside authority
However, with a growth in crime rate and a desire to deal with it without cruelty, these two conflicting traits of control and compassion were in an uneasy equipoise. Most reformers believed that a penitentiary was the vehicle for a new type of punishment which was deterrent, reformatory and humane, as opposed to a site of durance prior to the reform movement. A prison house was viewed as a not only a congregation of holding cells for prisoners, but also a place that would be capable of inducing spiritual, moral change in the individual, eventually offering a guarantee of social cohesion. In the age of industrial revolution, similar to exhibiting a prisoner providing community service in public as a form of repentance, the prison transformed into a place for prisoners to learn new skill sets which Howard views as the bettering of men meant the reforming of individuals who, upon release, were on comparable terms to those of the new industrial workforce. The penitentiary would expand its temporal economy to include time, establishing that the notion of crime can be equated with time, that it can be ‘paid for’ with time, rather than physical torture.
Apart from a conducive prison environment, order within the premises is equally important in maintaining effectiveness. Howard’s ‘separated system’ proposes an arrangement where prisoners were completely isolated in individual cells for sanitary purposes and easy identification, while subjected to redemptionist and rehabilitative programmes. Similar to his concept was Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a concept which induced prisoners into a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power; an arrangement that allowed surveillance to be permanent in its effects, even if discontinued its action. The circular plan of the Panoptic prison is designed with a central tower, with wide windows that open to the inner side of the ring, with the peripheric building being divided into individual cells, each extends the entire width of the building. In the peripheral ring, prisoners are totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, the supervisor sees everything without ever being seen. By confining prisoners into individual cells, it allowed them to be seen from the front by the supervisor, but the side walls prevented visual and physical contact with other prisoners. The prisoner then becomes an object of information, no longer a subject of communication. Also, the individual cells imply lateral invisibility, which guaranteed order; prisoners were unable to plot a collective escape or plan future crimes, along with better disease contagion.
While prison reform was effective in keeping the masses in order and proved to be an efficient tool of repression, it was also, perhaps primarily, built with an underlying agenda: a symbol and a manifestation of England’s extraordinary self-confidence in the late Eighteenth Century. The concept of the prison actively presupposed a substantially self-confident society – articulating a major tenet of the emergent industrial society: the malleability of men. Howard emphasized that improved prison conditions were not simply an end in themselves; instead, between 1860 and 1865, it was widely debated that reformatory prisons were ineffective in its operations. Crime rates were rising and in particular, such crimes were committed by ex-prisoners. It was also emphasized in parliament that such reformatory and educational regimes were ineffective, as punishment necessary to deter prisoners were insufficient. New prisons were built despite financial outlay, in effort to portray a sense of confidence and local pride, as authorities were determined to use prisons as one of their measures to cleanse the city both physically and spiritually, albeit their occasional ineffectiveness.
In light of using reformative prisons as a tool to cleanse the city and the individual, British prisons became extremely overcrowded after their Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. Eventually, supported by Howard’s argument for a more humane treatment of prisoners to construct two prisons or ‘penitentiary houses’, a competition was held for the design for 600 men and another for 300 women on a site in Battersea dronting the south bank of River Thames. An etching of the tomb of Cecilia Metella by Piranesi which inspired Soane’s proposal, consisted of three major structural elements: a cylinder above a square block and a conical mound crowning the monument. Apart from symbolic significance, the cylindrical form of the tomb exhibits visual and psychological effects as well; the internal spaces of a rectangular building transmits a directional emphasis along a longitudinal axis, whereas for central buildings, in particular circular ones, convey a notion of focus towards a central vertical axis. Soane’s design for the men’s prison exhibits his priority for a radial planning rather than for physical amenities or security, along with the expression of a fortress-like character of a medieval castle without adopting any crenellation, machicolation or portcullis details.
While Soane might have adopted physical architectural details from the tomb itself in Piranesi’s etching, rather, the method and meaning behind the etching itself might be seen as another form of inspiration for architects to use in their designs. In his set of works ‘Imaginary Prisons’, Piranesi developed architectural fantasies and dark visions of conceptual prisons; with three possible sources of meaning: the combination of architectural elements that are out of proportion; the lack of a unitary space; and a perspective from the bottom that hints a floating sensation. His artworks portray the colossal and the magnificent, referenced from the physical and metaphysical depths of human souls – to acedia and confusion, to nightmare and angst, to incomprehension and a panic bewilderment. Using such references, instead of viewing limited spaces from a safe, fixed-observer perspective, Piranesi’s etchings draws the spectator into a polifering labyrinth of staircases, bridges and passageways that seem to lead into infinite depths, as if the spectator’s gaze is imprisoned by the represented space, lured in and captured, eventually having a sense of oppression. While such immense spatial experience might be effective in a prison setting, however, from an ethical point of view, spaces should be designed as accommodating, with adequate lighting and sense of directionality. Nevertheless, one could view its intensity as a positive experiential intervention, to highlight the grandeur of the space itself. The use of human figures to establish a form of scale is another one of Piranesi’s etching methods, where they seem to be pointing towards their line of sight, highlighting certain elements that would not have been immediately made visible, hence evoking a sense of curiosity in the spectator. The human figures, often exaggerated as tiny depictions to contrast the grandiose with the mundane, establishes the scale of the monument in the etching, they too provide local colour to the overall artwork. The immense scale of spaces and objects, as portrayed in Piranesi’s artworks, could inform the intention of architects and possibly be applied to the design for building entrances or core spaces.