Where is Power?
Describe a selected urban or architectural project as a passive governmental device, with explicit reference to the writings of Bentham, Foucault or Wallenstein.
The object of a politics of health in the late decades of eighteenth century France prompted much governmental and scientific study in testing new architectural concepts in hospital schemes. The 1772 fire which broke out the Hôtel-Dieu, Paris’s largest hospital, ignited this scrutiny of the lack of efficiency in hospitals through random arrangements of patient illnesses and infections. The neoclassical un-built proposal of the Hôtel-Dieu from architect Bernard Poyet looked to formulate a radial plan to allow a clean environment, supporting clear ventilation, hygiene and adequate water supplies. The hospitals function looked solely to order treatment of the ill yet a systematic rule of hierarchal control and registration are distinguished from this isolated institution. Exploring the readings of Foucault he looks to establish these institutions as ‘laboratories’ and ‘machines’ of discipline via segregation, observation, and branding of subjects in relation to Bentham's panoptic theories in productivity. This paper will look to engage with these philosophical readings critically reviewing the passive architectural apparatus imposed on Poyet’s proposal and how the subject reflects technological advancements to further iterated power to institutions via the abstract diagram of Foucault.
Referring to the burning of the Hôtel-Dieu its design was subject of negotiation and change in coining a different functional composition of health. Prior to the events, the general hospital could facilitate three to four thousand patients in twenty-five wards which accommodated a total of just over twelve hundred beds.1 In times of epidemics this number could easily rise to six or seven thousand.2 Yet a clear lack of sanitation was apparent within these mass wards with French chemist Antoine Lavoisier pronouncing that “on entering the hospital, a patient is often placed in the bed and sheets of a scabies infected”.3 The blaze sparked governmental investigation into how the diseased could be condemned through an institutional form of mass
their own bed.6 Further to this, the institute was intended to be secluded from all adjacent buildings on to the nearby Île des Cygnes with Poyet arguing this would grant greater access to clean air.7 Although it cannot be underestimated the remodelling in satiation of the hospital was required, the influence of the french revolution was paramount being a period of radical, social and political upheaval, with monarchy taking a robust reaction to design.
humanity – on the Île des Cygnes site – whereby the institute controls the infected, condemning a subconscious state of imprisonment and with that a state of self-governance. Even in the drawings representing the hospital proposal (Fig. 3) a lake appears to circulate the building, theoretically enhancing this repressed notion, that even if one was to try to escape they cannot as the architectural understanding of form locates the institution with a set of discourses and knowledge’s, inscribing on to the sick body an encompassed spatial grid. Furthermore the idealised prospect in positioning the Hôtel-Dieu on an isolated site would not enhance air flow as proposed, but rather restricts it all together. Steadman highlighting this design issue claims “form of galleries where they terminate is not the most
Following this condemning by authority Foucault depicts the role of observation of the plaque via cataloguing, stating, “surveillance is based on a system of permanent registration….document bears the name, age, sex of everyone, notwithstanding his condition”.10 It is witnessed then that all irregularities are noted and if this criteria is not met to the standard of state, disciplined supervision will be utilised upon that individual by the “authority of [a] syndic”11. This manifests a clear association to Poyet’s concept but also the political reorder of authority placed within the establishment. The Hôtel-Dieu proposal was going to be the one of the first full hierarchy control of patients in terms of the branding of subjects, ridiculed to documented examination. Although this may appear to sustain a clear order of patient care, control of the individual is more influential as a passive governmental tool.12 As a new establishment of authority of doctor, (syndics) and nurses (intendants), they observe and control everything of that individual until a point in which the individual no longer becomes an individual but a number conformed to a collective. Through this, the register segregated design, a instance of self-governance is achieved, as the patient will subconsciously follow and accepted the restrictions embedded in fear if not a binding these rules – infection will grow and spread. Even to say if the patient was ultimately released, freedom is false as the laboratory experiment has imposed self- governance being driven into the privacies of the home itself producing ‘house discipline’. When the illness or infection is all but vanished the daily routine orders of what to do, what to eat, how to move from the physician are then drilled into everyday life with this subconscious notion of being continuously watched. Poyet’s proposal thus conjures this moment of control via the governing body with those who object the political modes in revolution disappear in totality.
The architectural testing of inconspicuous authority is somewhat reminiscent of Bentham’s panopticon, not only in form but in ideology of observing multiple individuals at any given time. Although the panopticon was not realised until 1791, six years later to
in efficiency, not of patient curing but of efficiency in discipline. In referring to Foucault’s plaque ideology that it creates a state of control amidst the madness Poyet’s design seemingly controls infection in a similar fashion. As mentioned the promise of ventilated segregated wards was false, as it condensed infection, spreading disease eliminating those subjects who were vocal in wanting revolution to a point of death. As death and illness increases the hospital would then function as an abstract factory of state productivity, a conveyor belt in ridiculing those who were against the monarch. This would intensify hierarchy and allow the state to penetrate into individuals’ everyday lifes “right down to the smallest details” 16 . The optical arrangement forms this unbreakable chain that production is continuous and efficient and such central governing devices of religion can be fully explicit and utilised to there potential in state control.
In conclusion, to reflect upon the ideas of Foucault in his appreciation of the plaque in how this affects the way a town is governed, generates a surprising depiction of Poyet’s Hôtel-Dieu proposal, in the submissive devices used to control individuals. The hospital was never brought to tuition due to the French revolution however the design signifies a complete rethinking in how hospitals should operate patient numbers and illnesses at the time. Although there appears to be thought in supplying fresh air in moving the hospital to an isolated location and forming spokes of wards in a radial pattern to ventilate the flow of air, critically reviewing these showcases a different thinking. Poyet’s concept rather depicts control of individuals segregating humans into categories of product types whereby the hospital becomes a laboratory of experimentation in self-governance and hierarchy. Using God by the means of a chapel at the heart of the plan, mirrors that of the panopticon, heightening this subconscious control that state and religion are intertwined reinforcing this concept of constant surveillance. The transformation of the hospital into a machine of productive discipline further endues that the monarchy was struggling to control the masses requiring an architecture which could deploy concealed physiological hierarchy into riotous revolutionists. Foucault’s accounts assist to rethink these qualities in a direct reflection of political agenda to explore the hospital design and to how a state can establish passive authority into institutions to regain subjective control.
1 John Dresden, The insitute of architecture and urban studies: design for a 18th century hosptial http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/collection/1516-design-for-an-18th-century-hospital CCA, 5th June 2012 (Accessed on 12th December 2015)
2 Dresden, The insitute of arrchitecture and urban studies: design for a 18th century hosptial
3 Michel Foucault, Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of the Medical Profession (Translated Routledge Classics 2003) p.66-67
4 Marten Kuilman, A Panoramic Review: Quadralectic Architecture, Hospitals 3.5 https://quadralectics.wordpress.com/ Geplaatst op. 26th August 2013, (accessed 13th December 2015)
5Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: the birth of the prison, (London Penguin 1979) p.196
6 Dresden, The insitute of arrchitecture and urban studies: design for a 18th century hosptial
7 Philip Steadman, Building types and forms, (Bridgeman Art Library 2014) p.71
8 Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: the birth of the prison, p.195 9 Steadman, Building types and forms, p.71
10 Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: the birth of the prison, p.196
11 Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: the birth of the prison, p.201
12 Sven-Olov Wallenstein , Biopolitics and the Emergence of Modern Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press 2009) p.33
13 Jeremy Bentham Panopticon or Inspection House : The idea of a new principle in construction (Dublin Print 1791) p.31
14 Geroge. E. Saynor, Plans to Prosper You (Windpress publishing 2006) p.59
15 Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: the birth of the prison, p.195
16 Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: the birth of the prison, p.197
Fig. 1. Jean Baptiste Genillion, oil on canvas, ‘Fire at the Hotel-Dieu in 1772’
control to observe such instances. The french architect Bernard Poyet sought to experiement with such submissive authority into the hosptial concept publishing his phamplet ‘Mémoire sur la nécessité de transférer et reconstruire l’Hôtel-Dieu de Paris’ (1785)4, asserting an immense neoclassical radial plan. A diameter measuring approximately three-hundred meters was to house five-thousand patients; sixteen spokes were formed in generating segregated wards, categorizing inflection and illness types.5 This was to promote clear ventilation and light passage through all manners of the design thus to sustain an environment of hygiene. The spokes would then synchronize to a central courtyard were a chapel was positioned so that patients would be able to take part in church services from
The significance of monarchic resistance to subjective altercation was pivotal in outlining the disciplined experiments witnessed in Hôtel-Dieu proposal in referring to Foucault theories. A comparable study can be drawn between these two entities of Poyet’s hospital alignment and the plaque in relation to the laboratory model, as a strict governance of hierarchy, supervision and control. Foucault denotes this objective in discipline by the means of a historical recollection of a seventeen century plaque which inflicts itself on to a town. In the premature instances of contamination Foutcault remarks the repressive nature of authority in zoning, “Strict partitions, closing the town, outlying districts… the division of the town into distinct quarters, each governed by an intendant”.8 It is apparent that there is a sectioning of infected from society in a state of governance which reflects that of Poyet’s proposal, with complete segregation of categorised infections – never coming into contact with each other through the radial plan. However arguably there is an exclusion from society completely, as the Hôtel-Dieu is quarantined from all manners of
Fig. 2. Bernard Poyet Hôtel-Dieu plan proposal 1785, published in his ‘Mémoire sur la nécessité detransférer et reconstruire l’Hôtel-Dieu de Paris’
(December 2015)
conductive to the renewal of ventilated air”.9 This then constitutes that there would have been congestion and those that would have been placed in these categorised wards, disease would only have escalated, worsening those that are already been infected until a point of death. The submissive idea that the hospital is a place of safety and security, Poyet’s design overturns this theory to a laboratory, whereby the state experiments to alter behaviour of patients to correct there subjective opinions to a point of confinement with no philosophical escape.
Fig. 3 Bernard Poyet Hôtel-Dieu elevation proposal, showing isolation via a lake.
Poyets Hôtel-Dieu, represents this model of principles in power should be visible and invisible.13 Surveillance, as already mentioned appears to come from the physicians; however this can be argued that the architecture embodies itself to be the observer by the means of a governed chapel. Placed centrally – like that of the observation tower in the panopticon – the chapel denotes an image of religion, of god, the all seeing eye which can view all infectious categories which are placed within. The patients knowing the house of god is watching is thus then restricted to conform to the rules Fig. 4. A prisoner in the panopticon of holy service whereby “the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” Jeremiah 29:1114, in matter of political agenda. Who is not to say that the employees are also bound to this constant philosophical view of laboratory surveillance as the observers are observed with power over mind over minds, as the institution engraves hierarchy, in experimenting with the human body. Further to this to compose a grandiose external and internal façade is evocative of that of a roman colosseum in a historical depiction of power, housing the irregularities of state in a radial scheme, separated from society only facing inward to honour governance and religion itself. It can be said that the Hôtel-Dieu proposal subjectively imprisons employees and patients together as history, governance, monarchy and religion amalgamate to form a totalitarian force as the hospital design passively becomes a mechanism of treatment itself.
Fig. 4. A prisoner in the panopticon
The Hôtel-Dieu proposal can further be scrutinised and reflect that of Foucault writings in discipline as the hospital is conformed to authority in efficiency by condemning the architecture as an image of state productivity. Poyet’s proposal must not be understood as a dream hospital but a diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form of technologies of assessing health involving separation, circulation, surveillance and classification. Foucault writes about these qualities in refection of the state as these form the “utopia of the perfect governed city15”, how illness is a political dream of controlling subjects. This is viewed in Hôtel-Dieu concept in the regime of segregation of illnesses in viewing humans as products to the hospital machine, remvoing all manners of individuality to a point of subconscious control. To design the radial plan heightens this notion of governance
Fig. 5. Hôtel-Dieu centralised chapel depicting God