ABSTRACT
In 1953, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Institute of Architects jointly launched the 'Architectural Study Project'. Numerous International Style psychiatric hospitals were built in the 1946–1960 period in developed countries in the West and, to a lesser extent, in less-developed places. The death of the asylum and, in time, its postwar modernist successors, mirrored the reappraisal of custodialism. This centered on the gross inadequacies of total institutionalism. In the United Kingdom, the Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency, known as the Percy Commission, had established medically defined parameters of mental illness. The situation deteriorated in Illinois to the point where public protests were held by nursing caregivers in the face of severe state budget cuts in mental health care, including 1,700 staff layoffs statewide in a single fiscal year.
