ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the work of Michel Foucault offers an approach to the analysis of architecture as constructed space which breaks up the division of analysis into that appropriate to the history of ideas, the evolution of styles and constructional techniques, and that appropriate to the social sciences. Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish is focused around an account of the development of the modem prison, and is concerned to challenge a pervasive Enlightenment view of truth and power as inherently opposed forces. Knowledge is a necessary resource of power, power needs definite knowledge in order to be productive. The ‘gaze’ of the inspector in the tower is a simple form of power-knowledge, it is productive both of controls over subjects and the remodelling of their conduct, just as the ‘gaze’ of the clinician in the hospital is productive of observational knowledge.
