Architecture as a control device. Disciplinary strategies on architecture as a post-Enlightenment tendency

Abstract

The turn between the 18th and the 19th century involved a lot of changes in Europe in the social, cultural and intellectual spheres of society. During this period a whole new group of strategies were applied in order to fight against ignorance and superstition through knowledge and science. In this moment, and because positivism was also applied to buildings and cities, architecture is stablished as the main device that ensures full social control, substituting the open spaces where public punishments were displayed during previous centuries. These rituals were not considered necessary anymore, and institutions based in the use of discipline intensified their activity. These institutions pretended to control people by building knowledge on them. Typologies like prisons, schools or hospitals appeared then, and, even though they have different purposes, they all shared the same strategies. So, can architecture and the city be understood as devices used to ensure social control?