# MILITARIZED ARCHITECTURES /// Forms of Constraints by Norman Johnston

picture: Illinois State Penitentiary Stateville 1916

Forms of Constraints: A History of Prison Architecture is a book written by Norman Johnston which investigates the physicality of prisons from middle age to the XXth century. It is very interesting, not only as an understanding of the retaliation institutions prison embodies but also because prisons represents the quintessence of authoritarian societies, one can very easily compare their plans with those of “normal” architecture and find a lot of similarities. Architecture is systematically used as an apparatus of control and the plan almost always expresses this dimension very clearly.

Johnston Norman. FORMS OF CONSTRAINT. A history of prison architecture. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003