Abstract:
This essay studies Michel Foucault's philosophy and in particular his ideas on heterotopia. It is an attempt to connect ideas to built architecture, in an exploration of the relevance of a theoretical idea, relating it directly to architecture using the psychiatric clinic building typology as a case study.
Foucault's term Heterotopia, meaning "other-spaces" alludes to built places but he does not discuss actual architecture in very much depth. I apply the ideas and definitions of heterotopia to psychiatric clinics to see if it is truely heterotopic in Foucault's terms, and also to see how it is so, as a demonstration of the relevance of the idea, seeing what it adds to the discourse of architecture.
Heterotopia, an other way of seeing architecture.