Theory and Development of Asylum Architecture
The medical profession of psychiatry, known as "Asylum Medicine" from about 1830 on, in insane hospitals was instrumental in the planning and development of asylum architecture. Nineteenth-century philosophers and architectural theorists argued that the natural and built environment shaped behavior. The doctors who promoted the establishment of mental hospitals used the same rhetoric as social reformers and park enthusiasts: that nature was curative, exercise therapeutic, and the city a source of vice. Early psychiatrists assumed that mental derangement was caused by environmental factors, particularly the tensions present in the individual’s current domestic or social environment, which in turn suggested that a changed setting might alleviate psychic pain. Psychiatrists, also known as medical superintendents, collaborated with architects to enhance the new social environment of the insane asylum. A series of plans, such as the Kirkbride plan and the Cottage plan, resulted from this collaboration, developed using theories that would help facilitate the treatment of patients.
Read more about this topic: Asylum Architecture
Famous quotes containing the words theory, development, asylum and/or architecture:
“... the first reason for psychology’s failure to understand what people are and how they act, is that clinicians and psychiatrists, who are generally the theoreticians on these matters, have essentially made up myths without any evidence to support them; the second reason for psychology’s failure is that personality theory has looked for inner traits when it should have been looking for social context.”
—Naomi Weisstein (b. 1939)
“Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“The most threatened group in human societies as in animal societies is the unmated male: the unmated male is more likely to wind up in prison or in an asylum or dead than his mated counterpart. He is less likely to be promoted at work and he is considered a poor credit risk.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)