Editorial Review:

Elaborately conceived, grandly constructed insane asylums--ranging in appearance from classical temples to Gothic castles--were once a common sight looming on the outskirts of American towns and cities. Many of these buildings were razed long ago, and those that remain stand as grim reminders of an often cruel system. For much of the nineteenth century, however, these asylums epitomized the widely held belief among doctors and social reformers that insanity was a curable disease and that environment--architecture in particular--was the most effective means of treatment.
 
In The Architecture of Madness, Carla Yanni tells a compelling story of therapeutic design, from America's earliest purpose--built institutions for the insane to the asylum construction frenzy in the second half of the century. At the center of Yanni's inquiry is Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, a Pennsylvania-born Quaker, who in the 1840s devised a novel way to house the mentally diseased that emphasized segregation by severity of illness, ease of treatment and surveillance, and ventilation. After the Civil War, American architects designed Kirkbride-plan hospitals across the country.
 
Before the end of the century, interest in the Kirkbride plan had begun to decline. Many of the asylums had deteriorated into human warehouses, strengthening arguments against the monolithic structures advocated by Kirkbride. At the same time, the medical profession began embracing a more neurological approach to mental disease that considered architecture as largely irrelevant to its treatment.
 
Generously illustrated, The Architecture of Madness is a fresh and original look at the American medical establishment's century-long preoccupation with therapeutic architecture as a way to cure social ills.
 
Carla Yanni is associate professor of art history at Rutgers University and the author of Nature's Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

I agree with sigdragon:

I tend to agree with you sigdragon. Most authors outside of the field who write on this topic do not do the proper research on mental illness/psychology/psychiatry. The reader must be very cautious and hesitant to accept knowledge from a writer who may be writing in their field but incorporating vast data from outside of their field. It is difficult to find well researched and accurate books on history/treatment of mental illness but there are some out there. Two come to mind: "The Art of Asylum Keeping:... more info

Superb study of intersection of arhitecture, treatment of mental illness, and social norms:

Once again, Prof. Yanni has contributed a significant work to the literature on architecture and society with "The Architecture of Madness." Following her well-received study of Victorain museum architecture, "Nature's Museums," her new work vividly depicts the relationship among social views on mental illness, prevailing trends in the treatment of mental illness, and the institutions into which those sufferers were admitted. A reader can only agree with Cotterill and Solomon that Yanni's work is, on... more info

Beautiful Scholarship:

The Architecture of Madness is a thoughtful, important, and visually stunning book, which, for the first time, studies the relations between architecture and theories of treating the insane in public institutions in nineteenth-century America. The author is an architecture historian who is interested in relations among architecture, science, and social and cultural history and whose wide-ranging intellect is drawn to topics that open up the importance of architecture within the intellectual culture of... more info

The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States:

Carla Yanni's book will be the classic text on
19th century insane asylums. She has done
a masterful job of blending meticulous research
and superb analysis with well crafted writing.
Yanni, who is well versed in the history of architecture
and the history of science, tells a compelling,
accessible story.

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