Architectural Association of Ireland - Building Material Ten

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On an Asylum - Ryan Kennihan
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The Section
A careful look at the section of the cellblock (fig.4) and it becomes clear that within it there lies an entirely different reading to the stated intent of these institutions, a reading that holds a mirror to the society that made them, rather than the patient for which they were intended. There is, of course, another impetus for the creation of this humanitarian institution. That of fear.

The discussion of fear as a political motivation for this Victorian Humanitarianism is not new, and is well documented in many sources. In the mid to late eighteenth century, there was a sharp rise in the proportion of the population to receive poor aid, due, in part, to an increase in unstable industrial and wage labour. The causes of this are numerous, and best discussed elsewhere, yet what remains important is that the Bourgeois became intolerant of this drain on their wallets. In addition, this large number of unemployed poor, concentrated in the urban centres, inundated the ruling classes with the continual dread of, "an army of landless vagrants" rising from below. This large amorphous group, simply a vast unknown to the middle classes, was seen as urgently threatening to the motivations and morals of their society. Yet, this reason and knowledge based society, created by the middle classes, had eliminated their former means of assuring their prominent positions. Violence, restraints, shackles, execution, torture as modes of ensuring subjugation, were all now seen as barbaric. Thus the culture that science and reason had created essentially disarmed them, removing all of their former defences. The fear that filled that void, of an unfathomable horde, forced the bourgeois to construct a fa�ade of security for themselves, a fa�ade which manifest itself in the guise of humanity for others. The motivations of many humanitarians was indeed sincere, yet perhaps part of the reason its implementation was so successful lies in the unspoken opinion that institutionalization was a solution to a socio-political problem. Classification, documentation, and institutionalization helped bring order to the mob, at least in the minds of the ruling class. The buildings embody this motivation. The lunatic asylum was created as a rational tool to fight the irrational; the irrational in the minds of the patients, the incomprehensible hoard in the minds of the bourgeois, and the irrationality of the fear itself, which struck against the very foundations of their era. "It was a preventative measure, providing for the detention of people who had not committed any crime�.the asylum was an unqualified instrument of social control."