Why the talk is inspiring?

Whether they were called asylums, retreats or mental hospitals, buildings for treating and containing people deemed to have mental disorders have a difficult history. Sharing common roots with prison architecture, institutions built by the state often emphasised security and austerity, while masking these features with architectural imagery that spoke of enlightenment and even freedom. A more therapeutic impulse can be seen in smaller facilities designed by and for grass-roots groups. This talk explores the tensions in psychiatric architecture with reference to a range of examples across space and time.

When: 2024 11 12, 7 PM. Where: National Gallery of Art, Vilnius.


Recommended book

Freedom and the Cage: Modern Architecture and Psychiatry in Central Europe, 1890-1914

Leslie Topp

Freedom and the Cage explores how modern architecture, politics and psychiatry interacted in Vienna and the Habsburg Empire in the years around 1900, with a focus on seven large psychiatric complexes designed by architects such as Otto Wagner and Hubert Gessner.