When Room becomes Cell: solitude and isolation in asylum architecture

Leslie will explore the marked shift in the design of public, state-built asylums in Europe and North America over the course of the period between about 1830 and 1910. At the beginning of this period, the standard spatial unit for patient care and accommodation was the single room.  At the end it was the shared dormitory. This shift happened for a range of reasons – which differed across time and geography – but it was never uncontroversial. The shift from single rooms to dormitories certainly wasn’t an unproblematically progressive or enlightened development, nor was it a straightforwardly regressive one. Single rooms could create spaces for oppression and isolation, but also for privacy and the projection of individual autonomy.