fuente: http://thefunambulist.net/2013/04/05/weaponized-architecture-the-eastern-state-penitentiary-panopticon-the-materialization-of-the-diagram-and-its-fallibility/
The panopticon in its totality / assembled photographs by Léopold Lambert
The former Eastern State Penitentiary
in Philadelphia. The building is particular as it was one of the first
prisons to implement the panopticon scheme invented by Jeremy Bentham in
the late 18th century. This scheme is not fully applied as what is
actually visible from the center of the building are the ten alleys and
not the cells themselves; however, the centralization and totalization
of surveillance is manifested here and were probably operative to a
great extent. The prison was operative between 1829 and 1971 and along
the years, some additional branches were even incorporated to the
original layout, bringing the amount of visible alleys to twelve (two of
them can be watched thanks to mirrors). The small montage above
corresponds to a 360-degree view from the center of the building.
I often argues that Michel Foucault, who
contributed to made the panopticon well known, paradoxically never
thought in terms of architecture as, when he was writing or talking about architecture, what he was
really doing was to speak only of diagrams (we could say the architect’s
plan). What is true nevertheless, is that such a diagrammatically based
architecture definitely tends to reinforce the machinic functioning of
this building in the way it absolutely controls the bodies (that is the
definition of a prison). If we remain at the diagrammatic level, there
is no escape from this systematic operation; if we explore the
physicality of architecture however, the means of escapibility
correspond to the ability of a body to use the fallibility of
architecture in its physicality (there no fallibility at the
diagrammatic level). Here is one example: In 1945, two inmates of the
Eastern State Penitentiary dug a hundred feet long tunnel and escaped from the prison’s periphery.
Architecture is certainly what implements
the diagram on the bodies who cannot develop enough energy to
“vanquish” the matter and therefore have to be contained by it.
Nevertheless, architecture is also what makes the diagram fallible as it
inscribes the latter within the “eroding” characteristic of reality
which makes the matter vulnerable to a repetitive long term force that
ultimately allows its disaggregation and therefore the obsolescence of
its power on the bodies. In that case, the force of the diagram is
vanquished by what I like to call the “folds of the matter” i.e. the
characteristics of the material world that the diagram did not integrate
within its scheme of control. As architects, we might want to study
what would be voluntarily integrated folds in our diagrams/plans in
order for the bodies that are subjected to them to find their own
escapibility from the power of our schemes.
