Through the looking-glass: How nineteenth century asylums shaped school architecture and notions of intellectual abnormality shaped public education

Abstract

This paper utilizes Henri Lefebvre’s work to examine nineteenth century school architecture, in relation to asylums. The deployment of the asylums occurred in unison with the development of public schools. Based on archival research this paper seeks an examination of this interrelated development. The social/spatial arrangement of asylums and schools was not independent and random. The relation between institutions and modes of governance were conditioned through contingent systems of knowledge and practices. This produced separation between lived space, social practices and discursive practices. This paper explores this separation using Lefebvre’s idea of a triad of the perceived, the conceived, and the lived within social space. In other words, the practices and routines constituting production and reproduction (conceived), the symbols and images (representational), and the lived as the complex politically contested aspects formed in social space. Consideration of these domains coincides with deconstruction of the codified meanings and discursive formations, those which often conceal more than they reveal.