Hello again everyone! This is part of my massive blog update/overhaul, so you have already listened to this episode, feel free to scroll through the photos and move to the next post! If this is your first time here, welcome!
English: Inside one of the prison buildings at Presidio Modelo, Isla de la Juventud, Cuba.
Attribution: I, Friman– at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Presidio-modelo2.JPG, no changes made.
TRANSCRIPT:
(Jail Cell Closes, Siren)- It’s time for Architecture, Coffee, & Ink.
30 second Intro song
Hello, this is Hollywood C. and you’re listening to Architecture, Coffee, & Ink. A podcast dedicated to introducing concepts, detailing out designs, and tackling the architecture you might not realize the meaning behind. I’m your hostess and I am here today to start introducing you to the designs that make you wonder why.
tag line: So I ask you to brew your coffee, grab your sketch book and pen, and let’s begin.
This is so weird to be producing basically three episode-mini-shows at the same time. I feel like I just got finished speaking with you all, my dear listeners, and here I am again! It’s also weirdly impersonal, because normally, I have like a summary and conversation with my listeners before the show, but since its SPRING BREAK, whoop-whoop, I basically feel like I have been either working or sleeping and nothing in-between. Doing Spring Break right! Of course, this is part of the multiple episode release I spoke about last week, the three episodes are coming out Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week!
The episodes being released this week are the Panopticon Penitentiary, today, Killing Stones and Sulphur Springs tomorrow, and Cryptid Architecture on Thursday, because it’s Spring Break, and I have to do all the episodes, just all of them. Plus, cryptids and architecture? Just add murder mysteries and Matthew Gray Grubler, and I am sold that vacation package. But since it’s spring break, I thought we all deserve a lie in, so, enjoy the episodes coming out at noon each day this week, instead of 5AM.
Before the show begins, I am going to take a moment to focus onto a more serious topic. I have no doubt my listeners have been following the news in the past few weeks and are aware of the fighting ongoing between the Ukraine and Russia. I will be sharing some information on ways to help with war relief efforts from the Red Cross and a few others. If you can and feel called to donate and help, the information is currently on the Facebook page. I know that for some of my listeners, podcasts are a way to escape the news and reality for a few hours, but please at least send a kind thought, good karma, prayer, well wish, to all those who are affected by what is going on. If you ever know of similar efforts or would like to share a cause that I am not aware of, please, always feel free to share them. But please remember that wars maybe waged by governments, but the casualties are always people. This message is going to be released in several episodes that are coming out in the future. So please, if you are able, see what efforts you can assist with that are in your area.
But, let’s get started talking about how the eyes in the dark might just actually be watching you, in the Panopticon Penitentiary. First talking through the concept and then moving into a Case Study in Cuba-a prison, that was actually built to this design. The class I am TA-ing for actually talked about this topic, but I had already spent weeks doing the research for this episode, so it was a great refresher right before recording-but I almost chicken out of posting this, because I was lowkey afraid the professor was going to think I stole the idea.
But, I digress-my dear listeners, please buckle in, I know in the past, I have added trigger warnings to episodes, so, I am again going to add a just general one for this episode. We are going to cover prisons, torture, bodies-or rather one man’s after death requests. I would put this episode solidly in Mature audiences range. Nothing graphic, because, that’s just not my style here, but, if death and incarceration bother you, please skip this episode. And as always, check your sources, check your facts, and more importantly, check me.
The original concept came from a man named Jeremy Bentham, while there will be other names thrown around later in history, this man is where this concept became famous-but not necessarily where it started from.
So, Bentham, was born in 1748, on February 15, and died June 6, 1832. He was a recipient of both a Bachelors and Masters from the Queen’s College, located in Oxford England. Throughout his life, he championed multiple causes, I want to bring them up, because this concept more than any other we have talked about, illustrates that good intentions does not necessarily mean good execution of concepts. And this is what a lot of individuals, even in the articles I was reading, struggled with this topic-the ability of duality in humanity to be both a blessing and a curse in equal measures, often in equal strides. Often I feel like the weight of the human soul is defined by the rigor in which we both follow good intentions while carving away places to carry the burdens of our missteps. So way back in the 17- and 1800s, he was advocating for things like economic freedom, equal rights for women, abolishment of slavery, and the call for the persecution of the LGBTQ+ community to stop, to translate it into today’s terminology. There is of course, always a gap, when you translate because, well, I wasn’t around in the 18th and 19th centuries, despite the many rumors to the contrary. I mention that, because quite frankly, this project we are going to be talking about today, is a bit not good.
But during his career as a philosopher and social reformer in England, he created the idea of utilitarianism. So, if you are familiar with architectural history, or you listened to one of my earlier episodes, where I super, super briefly mentioned it, utilitarianism is a concept where basically the ends justify the means. To put it in a brutal summary. Basically the belief is that, so long as the overwhelming ‘majority’ is benefited, then whatever you have done, whatever task, building, etc., is justifiable. You all are smart cookies, and I have no doubt that you can already see the problem in this concept. There are 3 tenets of this concept, that basically boil down to 1. happiness is key, 2. the justifying of the validity of the action is dependent on said happiness, and 3. everyone has equal happiness value. There is nothing about morality or motivations included. Unfortunately, not everyone strives for the greater good, and under this ideology you can imagine that multiple groups and movements throughout history could use this concept to justify their screwy code of ethics.
In ethics classes, you have undoubtable discussed this concept through the train thought experiment-or at least I did in undergrad. The basic thought is, if there is a train coming down the tracks and cannot stop for whatever reason-sometimes the professor will say the brakes are broken or it’s being held hostage, whatever the scenario maybe- and you are manning the switch to allow the train to switch tracks, do you let the train go down the current path and kill all the workers or do you switch the tracks and kill the single civilian on the other track. Often to make it more complicated, they will add it’s a baby, or a group of animals, or they will keep the number of individuals per group the same, but change the age range in one group so there is a dramatic difference. Sometimes the thought exercise will include scenarios like if two people are drowning, who do you save? A Women or a serial killer? And then as soon as you pick, add on that the woman will eventually go onto produce Hitler, and does that change your outcome? My class left that day extremely somber, but these conversations are very circular because to answer them requires a certain level of understanding of the actual outcomes. Which is very important for our concept, and very different than the theoretical outcomes Bentham predicted. One thing I remember from my notes, is that in ethics we framed it in regards to pain and happiness, with pain being negative and evil for lack of a better phrase, whereas a lot of the articles and research I was reading was framing the agreement the way I surmised it above, where there is only happiness or an absence of happiness. Due to the time limitations of a podcast, I am using the simpler explanation. That doesn’t mean the other one is less true.
Okay, but back to Bentham, he was heavily implied to be a genius, with the most favorite fact of everyone to prove this is that he started reading Latin at an extremely young age-like the 3/4 range. During his life, his brother moved to Krichev, Russia in what is now modern day Belarus, his name was Sir Samuel Bentham and was actually a naval architect. He was the family extrovert to Jeremy’s introvert-and he is actually the one who came up with the idea of placing a central observation building or person, with the workers in a circle around. Once article, that I can’t find anymore of course, but will hopefully by the time I finish updating the blog by Friday, said that he used to sit in a chair in the middle of the workers, as he oversaw a lot of works and projects, and that’s how the original idea came out. Since I can’t find it at the moment, if I print a retraction next week, everyone knows why. One thing I think that was very sweet, was that Jeremy, actually did acknowledge this. While this fact may not come out a whole lot, and is not as widely known, it wasn’t due to one brother taking spiting the other.
But this idea of having a central watcher caused him to eventually propose the Panopticon Penitentiary. Unlike his brother who was focused on the worker-force and employing what we would call micromanaging today but at the time was thought of as more of a centralized authority, Jeremy thought that it could be used as a method of reformation, by changing a couple core concepts. His idea was if you build a centralized watch tower, that is kept dark, with prisoners all around in individual isolated cells, unable to see anything or anyone else but the darkened watch tower, it would invite reform and penance within the individuals. Because they wouldn’t know who exactly is watching them. Whether it’s their mothers, or friends, high society. Its utilizing society as a disciplinary method invoking self-reflection underneath the Quaker ideals. The Quakers ideals basically boil down to religious enlightenment is from one’s inner self, or through self-reflection. So, what he was trying to do, was create an environment to allow for individuals to self-reflect. As we known now, isolating someone, and preventing them from seeing anyone else, but believing that at any moment someone could be watching is psychological torture. The thing is, while he had the drawings you will see done by Willey Reveley, who was an architect, Jeremy never built one himself-despite his lifelong efforts. But, others did, which is why we now know how it affects others.
Plan of the Panopticon
1843 (originally 1791)
The works of Jeremy Bentham vol. IV, 172-3
Author Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832)
Which is what we are going to move into, so, while I am going to focus on the one that is truest to his concept and has a beginning, middle, and end several prisons in the world also followed the idea of solitary confinement. So, just in the United States, where we had a pretty strong Quakers influence. Just a quick explanation of Quakers, they started in the 1650s in England, and were a Protestant Christians-which means that they were a sect of Christianity. There are active Twitters for them, and promoted peace and simplicity. How that translated into this concept was that it meant the cells were very simple, minimal. The thing is, they realized how much this affected people mental and abandoned the concept once they did because the goal wasn’t to torture people, it was to reform and re-introduce them to society. BUT it came back as a design, and quite frankly there are jails existing now that still use solitary confinement. Now, I am not talking about the cases where it is for the individual’s own good, or due to health reasons. No, I am talking about cases such as one case from 1983 where the inmates were by themselves for 23+hours at a time. And this is why I think as a concept this is so important to discuss and bring up, because history just keeps repeating itself.
So, for today’s case study, we are going to talk about the Presidio Modelo, which is currently open and available for tours, if you are ever in Chacón, Nueva Gerona, Cuba. And again, spoilers, this has already opened, operated, and been shut down, meaning that it is perfect to analyze under utilitarianism, because we can decide if the ends justified the means. So, The Presido Modelo, is actually on the Island de la Juventud, and is constructed of a series of these circular buildings. It was modeled after another Panopticon in the US, and there were actually more scattered across the world and since abandoned. In this complex, each building is set up as I described earlier, having cells with windows around the outer perimeter, with a central darkened watch tower. The watch tower looks like a light house almost. Once you are in the cells, you can’t see your neighbors, the two views available are either out the window or the darkened tower. Altogether there was a series of 5 of these structures, with 4 surrounding a central middle building. Built somewhere in the late 1920s, unfortunately, it seems like the exact years change depending on sources, some as early as 1924 and some saying construction lasted until 1931. It was done underneath Gerardo Machado, who started first as a President and later became the Dictator of Cuba.
It was designed originally to be the one prisoner per cell, but due to the number of inmates, ended up sliding into the opposite issue. Being so overpacked and crowded, it was causing sanitary problems. To put it bluntly, the prisoners were packed in, with no provisions to accommodate for this overcrowding. This caused the inmates to revolute, and was eventually what caused the prison to close down. Fighting, strikes, hunger strikes, etc. But before it did, it got a lot worse. Fidel Castro was actually imprisoned here during the 1950s, and once he seized power, he turned the place he was imprisoned into the location where he would stash those who fought against him-up until the prison closed in 1967 and the prisoners transported to other locations on the mainland. I will warn those who use online sources, I found several that used an exert from a book written in Spanish, referring to the prisoner testimonials of someone on the Isla De Pinos- so the island was originally called the Isle of Pines, until it changed names in 1978. So, this is actually the same island-though there is another island, somewhere else in the world with the same name as the original. So, I am going to read a quote from the English translation of the prisoners writing, describing how during the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the prisons had the grounds lines with TNT.
“I observed how several trucks loaded with boxes arrived towards the four circulars in which they confined us. The guards began to place those boxes in the tunnels of each of the circulars…”
https://web.archive.org/web/20110616054703/http://www.cubanet.org/prisiones/testimonios/30_1.htm, from the book
XXX aniversario de la clausura del presidio de Isla de Pinos
The current name of the island is the Isle of Youth, and now has a school and museum in the remains of the buildings. You can visit it 24 hours a day, and explore the tunnels. While haunted with the many ghosts that plague the site, a New York Times article included the following statement from some of the letters Fidel Castro wrote while imprisoned there.
“What a fantastic school this prison is! From here I’m able to finish forging my vision of the world…”
Jeremy’s body can currently been seen in the UCL, the University College London, as he asked for his head to be preserved and his skeleton outfitted in his clothes. Due to deterioration and later theft of the head by a rival school, it was eventually replaced with a wax head. He wanted his body to be used as an “auto-icon”. And at one point, there was a camera installed so you could see all those who visited. To learn if those visiting will also be affected by being observed.
Date27 February 2020, 11:59:26 Author Philip Stevens
But once again a big thank you to all my listeners! I will at some point update the Blog, by Friday, I mean, it won’t be three weeks from now, or anything that bad, I just meant that I have some job interviews and tasks that I will also trying to accomplish for when I return to school next week. Please rate and review. If you liked it, loved it, hated it, let me know. I love feedback, and hearing from everyone, and more importantly, sparking conversation. I think everyone knows we have a Facebook page and group which is just under the same name as the podcast. https://architectureink.design.blog/, is the website, Everything will be linked in the show notes. Now, later on, I will be posting two other episodes, the “Cryptid Architecture” and “Killing Stones and Sulphur Springs”! I posted the release schedule for the episodes this week on Facebook. But as always,
May your coffee mugs be full, and your ink wells never run dry.
(60 secs end song re-looped.)
SOURCES:
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