Panopticon, the Concept and the Implementation
"Morals reformed - health preserved - industry invigorated, instruction diffused - public burthens lightened - Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock - the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied - all by a simple idea in Architecture!"
Jeremy Bentham
The Panopticon Writings
Sounds intriguing? Back in the day when people actually used their brain to come up with new ideas, instead of watching TV or scrolling feeds there was a guy named Jeremy Bentham who proposed a brand new concept in institution (mostly prisons) design - the Panopticon.
The main idea is to always have all the inmates under supervision. Real or perceived, as the supervisor could see everyone at any given moment, but not the other way around. While it's impossible for the supervisor to observe everyone at once, the inmates could not see him nor could they know for sure whether they are being watched right now or not. Thus they would effectively watch themselves, being under psychological pressure all the time.
The ethical side of the idea is a subject to debate, but it's efficiency can hardly be denied. Somehow it was never properly implemented, some prisons were built with similar features, but a true Panopticon was never built. And today I will present you one panopticon-inspired prison in Ibagué, Colombia, where I went yesterday.
This old abandoned prison has a shape of a cross, not a circle. Instead of a watchtower in the center there is catwalks above the cells where guards could walk and observe the poor sods below. Doesn't seem very secure to me, but what do I know...
The building itself is locked, so I just climbed the wall and took some photos of the inside of the cells through the grates.
The old panopticon of Ibagué was built as a prison at the end of the 19th century and operated as such until 2003. In 1998 it was declared a cultural interest of a national nature. Ibagué was declared in 2004 as the Andean Capital of Human Rights and Peace by the Andean Parliament. In this way, the Panopticon will become the epicenter of this new conception of the city.
More photos from outside:
What do you think about Panopticon? Is it ethical? Is it better than modern prisons? Let's have a discussion in the comments!
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интересно, но жутковатая конструкция
The word panoptical or Panopticon derives from Greek and is the sum of three components of that language:
• "Pan", which can be translated as "everything".
• The noun "opsis", which is equivalent to "sight".
• The suffix "-tikos", which is used to indicate "relative to".
Putting together all the components would be like: "relative to seeing everything". This word was created by the designer of this type of architecture: Jeremy Bentham (that although you do not believe he was a philosopher)
By the way, I have seen this concept also in manufacturing plants, where the supervisor is located in an office in the upper and middle part of the plant to visualize all the workers; that is to say, the concept devised by Bentham has also been used in other sectors, not only in the prisons.
This photo allows you to appreciate the cross shape that you refer to in the post respect to panopticon of Ibagué .
This would be the other type of panoptic design considering the circular shape, which seems to me more effective, under the conception on which it was designed:
About 13 years ago I was in Ibaguè and I never imagined that there was a jail or structure of this type.
Very good information @nameless-berk...Greetings.
I love your additions to my posts, man. How did you like Ibaguè? I got an impression there is not much to do there.
I was visiting a cement production company ("Cementos Diamante" at that time, I believe that it was later bought by a transnational group) and I worked for a company that sold them paper sacks to pack the cement. But really it was not much what I saw because we spent almost all the time in the factory and were short visits of one or two days.
Excelentes fotos, buen post.
Photos are very wonderful and really distinctive
Better done
You are truly an artist
beautiful.
very good photography.
@originalworks
Эта функция уже сто лет не работает!
@exifr
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The architecture is beyond amazing! it looks kinda abandoned but that doesn't make it look less interesting. I really enjoyed watching the pictures, I'm a fan of places like those. Greetings!
Did you even read the post?
Yes, I did. You were talking about a prison in Colombia, declared as a cultural interest. I was saying it looks a bit abandoned because what I saw in the last picture. And, yes, I truly enjoy watching videos or pictures of abandoned places. I believe Panopticon has a great arquitecture for a prison even though it was built some centuries ago. Here in Venezuela are places who are as cool as that prison, for example the tunnels the president Juan Vicente Gomez ordered to built underground the city of Maracay, and they used to leave prisoners there, not much people knows about it but it exist nowadays. Sorry if my comment may seem like I didn't read your post but actually I did.
I explicitly said it's abandoned, that's all. It's ok, I miss little detail too, sometimes
very good post and impressive once, frankly I really like to follow and read a very useful post like your post