A regola d'arte. Rules and Models for the Prison Architecture between 18th and 19th Century

Abstract

The 19th century constitutes a moment of rebirth for the field of treatises, also thanks to the impulse given previously by the Enlightenment movement in restoring faith in a scientific organisation of knowledge, based on the possibility of defining general rules applicable to a multiplicity of concrete cases. At the same time, social and cultural changes sparked off a vibrant debate on the reorganisation of the detention system, with a transformation of the concept of punishment that also affected the places deputed to it. The prison compounds themselves, conceived to offer a synthesis of the "rule of art", become, in turn, the basis for norms and standards, constituting a support for the training of architects and engineers: the most successful solutions are mentioned by eminent theorists, while drawings and descriptions flow into publications of various kinds that, as they spread, collaborated in a process of proto-globalisation of design approaches to large public buildings. Starting from the recognition of these sources, the contribution investigates the instances that guided the design of prison architecture in programmatic terms and the pragmatic rules into which they were translated, in order to identify, on the one hand, the general paradigms, and on the other, the individual peculiarities generated by contextual contingencies.