Document Type
Thesis Prep
Degree
B. ARCH
Date
12-2015
Keywords
community mental health center, hospital, asylum, monumental, symbolic, hierarchical organizations of isolation
Language
english
Disciplines
Architecture
Description/Abstract
This thesis references the wave of new ideas for architecture’s response to mental health during the 1960s, based on a new understanding and approach to mental illness in society, with the proposals for Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs). These facilities formed the architectural basis of the Community Mental Health Act of 1963, which was ultimately never fulfilled, marking the wave of deinstitutionalization and the closing of psychiatric hospitals without these CMHCs in place. Therefore, this thesis picks up where the ball was dropped back then, proposing a new architectural solution based on further research and insight that has since taken place. The architectural typology of the asylum, based on the Kirkbride model, reflected society’s validation (and, therefore, more serious and humane treatment) of mental illness. However, the actual outcomes and depictions in popular movies have shown the admirable intentions of the Kirkbride model, based on monumental, symbolic, and hierarchical organizations of isolation, failed.
Recommended Citation
Lipuma, Dominic, "A Mat Response to Deinstitutionalization" (2015). Architecture Thesis Prep. 297.
https://surface.syr.edu/architecture_tpreps/297
Source
Syracuse Architecture 2015
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
