Matthew Dellehunt

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Architectural Thesis

 

The circular typology has been around since the beginning of civilization. Whether it’s used as a Ceremonial program, Communal housing program, Utopian urban plan, or Oppressive program, the circle has always been utilized as pure geometric organizer that has the ability to establish very clear levels of hierarchy and levels of equality. This final project seeks to analyze the circular typology throughout time, in attempts to understand how the same organizational operations are used with drastically different intentions and consequently different emotional and ineffable outcomes.

From this research, a design competition is proposed to re-imagine and re-contextualize the last Panopticon building in the US. The Stateville Corrections facility is home to the last ‘roundhouse’ prison structure built according to the Panopticon design still standing in the United States and one of the last in the world. This historical structure is now abandoned within the walls of an active maximum security prison. The design for this project seeks to break the barrier of this maximum security prison, to give the public access to this structure, while still maintaining security for the ‘community residents’ living and working within the prison.

Once the barrier is broken, the question of how to re-purpose this surveillance geometry is addressed. How can we re-imagine this highly oppressive and feared building as something that is liberating and constructive to both the internal community and the outside public? By deeply rooting the intervention in the earlier research on the circular typology, the power structure of the Panopticon is broken and flipped so that the circumference of the space is constantly being redefined as edge or center, periphery or focus, forcing the occupants to become watcher or watched of the building itself at different points along the program. These circular motifs blur the existing emotional turbulence while simultaneously opening up the space for new and innovative programmatic moves that generate an entirely new circular typology.

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SITE: Stateville Corrections Center, Crest Hill, Illinois

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PROFESSOR: Bradley Horn

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YEAR: Spring 2018

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COURSE: Graduate Thesis Studio

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