Physical Design Changes in the 19th Century English Asylums: A Study of Insane Asylums as Presented in ‘The Builder’ from 1843-1923
Under the umbrella of ‘Moral Treatment’ 19th century asylums were designed as a curative solution for lunatic patients. Many 19th century scholars considered architectural design elements as remedies for the lunatic population. Due to the presumed connection between architecture and patient cure, many 19th century English scholars provided guidelines to design ‘Ideal Asylums’ for patient cure. Asylums designed in the 19th century England followed the scholarly guidelines to promote patient cure, however, the physical design of asylums changed throughout the century. In 1965, the most controversial scholar of post-World War II period (Faubion, 2019), Michel Foucault identified asylums as new places for the moral reformation of patients. According to Foucault, in 19th century, the insane population became the moral outcasts hence a new psychological technique of moral management was popularized under the umbrella of ‘Moral Therapy’. Foucault argues that 19th century asylums were places to practice ‘Disciplinary Knowledge’ through the process of patient work. A handful of studies have investigated physical design changes of actual 19th century asylum buildings to understand which of the above-mentioned design philosophy were used in the 19th century asylums. Therefore, this study aims to track the changes in the physical design of 19th century asylums, to understand the reason for these changes. The study also aims to understand to what extent the physical design of asylum buildings followed the design suggestions prescribed by 19th century authors. To accomplish this purpose books and papers of thirteen 19th century authors are selected. Nine chronological case study asylums constructed during the 19th century have been also selected from a well-known architectural journal ‘The Builder’, to cross-check whether and to what extent these case studies followed scholarly guidelines. For this study, three methods are used including formal analysis, functional analysis and spatial analysis originally used by T.A.Markus in his book Buildings and Power. The findings of this dissertation illustrate that the physical design of the 19th century asylums changed significantly throughout the century reflecting an epistemological shift from patient care to patient control. The environments were designed in a way to support the structured daily routine and disciplinary regulations. These findings identify the gap between scholarly prescriptions and actual 19th century asylum design while explaining the reason for design changes. The study contributes to an understudied aspect of the 19th century asylum architecture in maintaining unequal power relations between patients and their custodians.
Architecture, Health care management, History, 19th century, Asylum, Behavioral Healthcare, Control, Design, Lunacy
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