mardi 16 juin 2009

# Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault

When we, architects, speak of Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault, we usually focus on Bentham's panopticon because it is definitely the most architectonic concept of this book. However we could also think about those pages, mostly about Jean Baptiste de la Salle's system of christian education which contemplate time and space in the same way that Charles Eames did with his powers of ten (see previous post); those time and space are not only controlable in the scale we experience but the real control can be reachable by exploring this infinite dimension of the "smallness".

Nowadays, this disciplinary society could seem not to exist anymore, in favor of Virilio's society of control. Nevertheless, principles remain and their application become even more subtle as long as materiality is often not visible anymore.