Paris has the Eiffel Tower. Berlin has the Brandenburg Gate. Northern Ireland has the H Blocks. An iconic architecture signifying place, this prison is quite simply the most recognizable edifice to have been built within the region.
Historically, the panopticon evoked the ideal of “the complete and austere institution” as defined by Michel Foucault. But the panopticon was never built, and the mechanistic pretensions of nineteenth-century institutions seem in retrospect compromised in their use of bricks and other old-fashioned, porous materials. The H Blocks of Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Maze, Long Kesh, County Down, Northern Ireland—whose watchtowers were visible from the main Dublin–Belfast road—were made out of seamless reinforced concrete surrounded by transparent layers of chain-link fencing and razor wire and surveyed constantly not only by the eyes of wardens but also by the impersonal presence of security cameras and their videotape recording. A complete and austere institution for the...
University of California Press