Architectural Association of Ireland - Building Material Ten

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On an Asylum - Ryan Kennihan
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The rhetoric of this revolution, taking place in England and across western Europe, ended up finding a piece of testing ground in Ireland, where the Lord Lieutenant's office had the freedom to enact legislation with little resistance. In 1817 Ireland became the first nation to pass legislation requiring the provision of public asylums across the country. The plans for the first nine Lunatic Asylums built in Ireland after the 1817 legislation were drawn up by the architectural practice of Francis Johnston and William Murray who designed two versions of the public asylum, a smaller version for 100 patients(ill.2) and the larger X- plan asylum for 150 patients. The former was erected at Armagh (1820-25), Belfast (1825-29), Derry (1829), Carlow (1833), Portlaoise (1833), Waterford (1835), and Clonmel (1835). Only two of the larger plans were erected at Limerick (1824-26) and Ballinasloe (1831-33). The designs for these institutions, buildings which were essentially some of the first publicly mandated and funded institutions for the insane in the whole of the Western world, are a compelling distillation of the philanthropic and architectural rhetoric of the time, and, at closer inquiry, reveal them to be potent elucidations of the many paradoxes inherent in the society that created them.

The Plan
It is on these foundations that the asylums of Johnston and Murray stand. Their asylums were a virtual checklist of every element promoted by the reformers of the era. The buildings were each sited about a mile outside of their respective towns in what was then virgin countryside and farmland. All of the natural elements of fresh air and bucolic landscape were there for the soothing of the misguided mind. Each wing of the buildings had its own corresponding airing yard and workshop in order to distract the demented musings of the psyche with the constant action of the body. The plans of these buildings were the embodiment of proper moral treatment for the betterment of the poor and insane and this is precisely how they were intended to be read; a perfect hybrid of the radial plan and panopticism (fig. 1) . Each of the building's radial arms is carefully laid out in order to classify and separate patients by sex, type and severity of affliction. For example, convalescent patients were kept in larger rooms on the front of the first floor. Noisy patients, i.e. the most acutely afflicted, were isolated at the ends of the diagonal arms, farthest from the Governor's House, and thus farthest from salvation. This placement kept them from upsetting the other patients while serving to exemplify the social and moral stratification of the asylum and fortifying the system of reward and punishment in the minds of the patients. Within the arms, patients were divided up into individual cells, facilitating individual treatment and individual reflection.