Example of a phenomenological study perceived-time and prison architecture Ouard Thomas

Abstract Architecture research steer more and more towards formalist and physicalist rules related to comfort, energy, innovative structure. However, in this approach people are reduced to the ranks of simple objects. The phenomenology offers an other way to place the life condition of people in the reflexion. Architects have an intuitive reflexion for integrating the relation between people and space in architectural design. Consequently architects are influenced by the preconceived idea of the popular culture. Nevertheless, a phenomenological approach in the architectural research can define some design orientation without a shape solution. And the architect could integrate results research in his building design. This paper present the development of a global method based on the perceived-time study and the evolving of psychosocial relation between inmate and prison. This method allows to determine if some specifics perceptions are induced by the architecture boundary or by the psychosocial relation with the prison. The sound landscape in prison The prison is an environment of overcrowding and life unchosen. This situation involves particular interpersonal relations: it's a stressed environment. In France the prison are defined by two concepts: security, society protection; humanism, the inmate have to come back in the society after the incarceration better than he entered in prison. We have studied firstly the relation between inmate and ambient environment in prison. This work made about the sound perception in the short incarceration prison. The result showed that the condition of incarceration defined by the constraint, the promiscuity and the psychological impact, modify consequently the perception of ambient environment. The prison removes from perception all positive elements, and especially the extra-penitentiary elements. We have called it: The pregnancy of total institution. This preliminary studies have revealed the relation between sound and sight. For example, less the inmate can see landscape outside the prison less he hear extra-penitentiary sounds. But this relation can't be generalised for all inmate. Of course, in the same building we have found some opposite type of environment perception. The explanation could be found in the evolving of psychological relation between inmate and prison institution. The environment perception will be worse if the inmate disprove the incarceration. This preliminary studies induced an fundamental question about prison architecture design. If the prison institution impact negatively the judgement of perception, the prison architecture, design by the architects, could it be improved the perceptive relation between inmate and space? We have to specify the sense of the word architecture in this case, it's not the shape or the physical environment, it's most the space capability to induce a specific ambience. Consequently, to answer this problematic we have to analyse the connection between inmate perception, prison architecture and prison relation. The main problem and the goal is to find a method integrating all this parameters. The phenomenology has the capacity to unify lots of disciplines: architecture, perception, lived, time and social relation in one thought. That's why, we have chosen phenomenology to develop a global method. 1-9

This paper will present the structure of this methods. The first section develops the fundamental knowledge related to the method development. Firstly, we have to explain the phenomenological concept of perceived time. Secondly, we focus the attention on time in prison and prison relation evolving. And lastly, we specify the prison design particularity. The second section develops the build of the method. The first part concentrated on describing the method thematic will be integrate the three previous notion (inmate perception, prison architecture and prison relation). The second part develops the experimental tools. And, the last part presents the global method. The ending section suggest some research development and method implementation. I Fundamental knowledge I.1 Perceived time, phenomenological approach Phenomenology “Phenomenology, it's the study of the essence [...] it's a philosophy which put essences in the existence and doesn't think that one can understand man and world differently than starting from their fact existence.” [Ponty – 1945] It's a philosophy where the world is always already there before the reflexion. Phenomenology find this naïve contact with the world, a relation of space, time and “lived” world. Phenomenology is a global reflexion about relation between an individual and his environment. There is a spatial and temporal prevalence of the location. The world is not universal, identical to everybody, but personal, and thus drawn up different relation according to each individual. What implies the basic concept of “here and now” [Moles – 1972] and “this-there” [Husserl – 1907]. Perceived-time (Erlebnis) If there is one “here” that involve one “elsewhere”, and if there is one “now” that involve one “yesterday” and one “tomorrow”. Perceived-time is a fact, integral part of life, which composes knowledge. Nevertheless perceived-time doesn't mean only the noematic dimension of the life experience but they are especially acts of conscience. Perceived-time doesn't belong to the past but always to the present. When I think about a previous action, this action lies unconditionally “here and now”. This notion of perceived-time must lead us to ask the notion of time. The traditional time representation is associated with thought of space. There is the past which flees and moves away from a fugitive point which is “now”. The future approach indefinitely but it's never here. In phenomenology the concept of time is different. The past is the subjective proximity of the past phenomena. “Now” is an elementary part of time quality. But in a discursive approach, “now” doesn't exist. We must transpose the concept of “now” on the concept of “present” that is the development of “now”. The present is the immediate contact of the individual with the time. And at last, the future can be understanding with the concept of “vital impulsion” [Minkowski – 1933]. Phenomenologically, the future is different than the past and the present because I don't have an immediate contact with him. The “vital impulsion” is a psychological phenomenon that carries me towards. It creates the future, the direction where all my life actions goes. If I loose the contact with my “vital impulsion”, I'm in morbid statement. This notion is important in the work about prison to understand the relation between inmate and space. Phenomenology of perception The perception is composed by two dimensions. The first dimension is associated to the Cartesian philosophy. In that case, the space is a mathematical dimension. This is the classic 2-9

scientific approach to analyse the space. But, this approach doesn't consider people in analyse. That's the objective perception. The second dimension is called “philosophy of the centrality” [Moles – 1972] and it refers at the point of view “here and now”. In this situation the individual is in the center of the perception. All people use these two dimensions to understand and analyse the world around him. The second dimension contains the subjective relation between the individual and the space. And that's this part of the perception we were interested in. The “philosophy of centrality” is a consequence of the phenomenology of perception. Let us recall that the perceived-time is a presence in the world: a spatial dynamic reconstitution. In second time, the concept of sense implicates a distinction between the physiological perception, the sensor of my body, and the sensitive, that is what I perceive by my sensor. The most elementary perception that a sensor gives is already instituted in a context which implies a sense (analyzed) to the sense (perceived). We can synthesize this second idea by saying that the perceived object is not constituted, but reconstituted at every moment while being connected with the previous moment and that to come. The environment is a personal-presence (Selbstgegebenheit). That means, the relation between the individual and the objects and others is established in a direct and perceptive contact. And that induces the concept of proximity. The world is analysed as centered, here and now, the presence of the object decreases as the distance increase. But this rule can be modified by some things. The concept of proximity developed by Hall [1966] analysed the formation of social distance. If you are friends you can be more closer than strangers. Hall defined four social dimensions which induce different distance: intimate, private, social, public. Another concept for the space proximity was developed by Moles [1972]. Some spatial structures can modify the proximity distance. It is the phenomenological study of the wall, condenser of space. At the end, our approach of perceived-time is directed towards the perceptive values of the world. We will retain three factors determining in the subjective judgement of perception. Initially we must consider the relation with things, personal-presences. Perception consists of these things (Objects, events, physical phenomena, etc.) which come in my phenomenological space and are present in my world. Secondly, we must consider the space of right which call potential use, which represents the liberty of action in the space. And lastly proximity relations, in other word the presence of other people in my action space. I.2 Time in prison: institutional time and lived time. The penal time The incarceration starts with sentence. It is always defined in days, months, years and sometimes for the perpetuity. It appears immutable, but the social time which is used as reference to the sentence evolves constantly. Each hour acquires a price which it did not have yesterday. The real time is important to the sentence, but it can't explain the relation between inmate and clockwork. We must involve the lived time to the relation between individual and his incarcerate life. The French penitentiary administration has defined three types of prisons in relation to time and to offence. For the short sentence under one year, it is called “maison d'arrêt”, for the sentence between one to five years, it is called “centre de détention” and it is a resocialization organisation, and the last for the long sentence and the dangerous people, it is called “maison centrale” and it is a security organisation. The incarcerate time: prisonization The lived time in prison is subjective. Lot of researchers noted some great differences in 3-9

the inmate adaptation to the time. The work of D. Clemmer [1940] was one of the first studies realized on the prison, to determine if the time spent in prison modifies the prisoner behaviour. He created the word prisonization which expresses the integration of the prisoner to the prison value. An individual prisonize to survive in the prison environment. The results of Clemmer showed that more the incarceration is long more the individual can be assimilated by the institution. But some other factors are effective: the personality and the will of the individual, his relationships to outside, or his participation in the event of the prison This research was use by Wheeler [1961], to analyse not only the time already carried out but the proportion of the time spent in prison and on another study the period of imprisonment. The result showed the number of inmate which has a great conformity with the prison-values decreased by half between the moment of the entry in prison and a period going from 6 to 12 months. And after the second study which analyzes the evolution of conformity followed a U curve. This curve is partitioned in three period of incarceration : the entry in prison (the first 6 months), the final period (the last 6 months ) and a central time ( representing the intermediary between the initial and final phase). Adaptation strategy The incarceration is not only a liberty privation. It is defined by some constraints to keep the individual and to manage the group of inmate. One of this constraint, is the abolition of his own personal time, perfect tool of coercion. The penitentiary time is an alienating time because it's a dominator. The inmate will adapt to his new situation according to four process defined by E. Goffman [1961] in his study of total institution: • “The withdraw into oneself”, the recluse cut all relation with the environment. • “The intransigence”; the recluse is voluntarily opposed to the institution, and don't want to work with it. • “The installation”, the recluse forget his old existence and makes institution his reference environment. • “The conversion”, the recluse accepts completely the rules of the institution completely. • Nevertheless, the recluse doesn’t follow always on of this strategy of adaptation. Definitely, the comportment evolving with the time and it's a subtle mixing of this fourth strategy. I.3 Prison Architecture The prison design The object of the architecture is to create a place for the life development. The building design be due to an individual reflexion of the architect about a futur human activities. And, all buildings are a combination of fonction and expression. “Architects cannot determine with precision what effet their buildings will have on the users. At best, their designs can support the rehabilitative process and offer a humane environment for staff and inmates; at worst, they should at least do no harm.” [Leslie Fairweather – 2000] Consequently, the design of prison induce three constraints :

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- to express the penal idea (firstly the security and the detention) - To be a place of life; - To stay connected with the outside, always in evolving If the solution of the first constraint could be resolute with the block plan organization and the technologies, the two latest constraints call the psychological effects of the prison environment. It's not easy to establish the relation between lived and design. Involving of lived may be as much a result of management procedures and personal characteristics of inmates and staff as of their environment. Architectural design is only one of several variable. The concept of ambience : Perception of the architectural space “There are number of key design factors to consider, from the major issues of location, size, layout and control, to the smaller-scale but no less important questions of living accommodation and environmental conditions.” [Leslie Fairweather – 2000] But, how analyse the last part ? One way could be found in the concept of “ambience”. It has been present in the fields of architecture for the last 10 years and was build with the phenomenological knowledge of perception, presented previously. The definition of ambience could be synthetize in the individual multisensorial experience of space. It implies the character of a place and its qualities. It takes into consideration the environment, the atmosphere, the feeling, the surroundings, the character and the mood of the observers and the way they express it. All of these factors make the ambience a difficult and complicated concept. Six fundamental dimensions of ”ambiental phenomena” are defined: Environment, social interactions, actions, physical signals, perception and cultural representations.[Augoyard – 1998] It's a plural conception of architecture. The polysemy and the interaction of ambiences (light, heat, air quality, sound and odour) call many hypothesis, problematic and method and must be integrate in plural measure studies. In the case of prison, the cultural representation, the social interactions, expressed by the adaptation strategy and prisonization, are pregnant in the individual perception of ambience. The many parameters involving in the ambiance perception implie the architect can't design it. Of course, it's not possible to know the sense that the individual could give of his perception of space. The concept of reference If we can't design the futur ambience in a building, we have to create a knowledge to determine which element could be impact the ambience and if it's possible. The architectural reference is always used by the architect which have to design a building. Of course, it's a large part of his own architectural culture. But sometime it can't help him for many reason. One of this, is the lack of knowledge, the “unlived” of this building, the misunderstanding of relation between individual and space. That's the situation in prison. In fact, we don't know if the perception of ambience is “in the wall or in the mind...” To create this reference of the typical prison ambience and to know how the architect could be involve it, we have to study it. Consequently, we have to define a method which permit this studies. That's the object of the next part.

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II Definition of the research method The prison is a place of tension and conflict which induces some particular practices. The nature of relationship between institution and inmate implicates perception with negativecharacteristics. Consequently, prison marks the inmate perceived-time and erases to the natural-perception the extra-penitentiary sensation. In other words, the prison becomes the unique presence in the “perceived-world” of the inmate. The inmate-body is constrained by the institution. The question is to know if the building-space, designed by the architect, has an impact in the perceived-time. This section presents the integration of this knowledge in a global research method. Our works consist in a first time to develop the problematic of the method that integrate different fields. Secondly, we will present the tools which permit to resolve this problematics. Finally, we outline a global method to analyse the relation between perception, architecture, adaptation strategy and time. II.1 Multidisciplinary approach, problematic of the method The question of the architecture boundary The objective of this method is to identify the impact of architecture on the inmate perceived-time. We must specify that what our understanding of architecture is not especially the materialization of a building but rather the architect's capacity to impact the perception in the penitentiary environment. Furthermore we must specify that the method especially deals with circulations spaces because of previous observations. First of all, the circulations spaces induce directly the organization of the block plan. The block plan is the fundamental element in the penitentiary architecture, because it implicates the security and the control policy, together with the separation of activities. It explains a several part of penitentiary program. Furthermore, this choice implicates the transition between spaces and makes possible the study of the boundaries of the prison architecture. More specifically, we studied the subject of architecture's boundaries between inside and outside. It represents the best way of applicable for the architect to induce some specific perception. Of course, the boundaries permit or not, the presence of specific things, thereby creating some ambient patterns. We have seen in the first chapter, the presence of some perceptive things do not induce necessary the presence of this in the individual perception. So, we must connect the perception to the psychosocial between inmate and prison. The evolving of the adaptation strategy: A time question The correlation between a specific perception and a psychological state is one of the specific and original point of this method. Indeed, it supposes than the relation between the individual and the institution can notably impact the perception of space of this institution. This phenomenological contribution induces than we can not understanding and analyse the perception only with a physical approach and still further with a study of the relation between perception and sense phenomenon. The method must integrate the adaptation strategy and allows analysing the evolving of the psychosocial relation between inmate and prison. The method correlates the institutional time with psychosocial factors.

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II.2 Tools of the method The commented walk: a tool to study perception The concept of the commented walk consists of the definition of a way which the individual will follow. It will be asked to him throughout his walk to describe all merged sensory phenomena he will perceive (light, temperature, wind, sound, odours…). It's possible to stop the walk to develop his perception. We obtain with this process a speech about an instantaneous perception. The transcription of the speech must be associated with the individual position in the way, and beyond words expressed we must note silences and hesitations. The data can be analysed in different directions: • To note formulations which reveal a singular event in perception. When the speech changes, expresses an appearance… • What is the reason of this? A particular event, a space phenomenon, a particular presence… Obviously, it exist an uncertainty on the reason of such perception, also the formulation will have this to make in the form of hypothesis. • Characterize the event. That consists to describe it, to comment it, and possibly to create a typology of it. The test of three characters: psychological tool This psychological test belongs to the category of projective personality measure. This test describes a situation which present two opposite point of view. The interviewed person must be delivered his opinion on the debate. We can measure on a scale going from one point of view to another the personal position of the individual. In our application, the situation of conflict confronts the point of view to a prison warder and a prisoner. The prisonization can be evaluated by the agreement or the dissension with the point of view of the prison warder. The best interest of this test is to compare the point of view produced in the same prison, consequently the same prison rules and the same type of management. Under the Wheeler [1961] hypotheses, the prisonization is traduced by a difference with the values of the prison warder. This test will correlate the prisoner behaviour with the institutional time. We must analyse the time situation of the inmate with two temporal marks. The first one is the date of the entry in the studied building. The second one refers to the hypothetical date of exit. For this second date, we must consider the proximity of the date of a request for a release of prisoner on parole. II.3 Correlation of the data We have just seen the various tools of the method. These tools refer to different disciplinary fields. We have to organize these results, as illustrated on the diagram below. The global analysis is built in three sequences: • The crossing between the institutional time and the result of the three characters test will permit to define an individual typology. At the end we have one data structure which reveals the evolving of the relation between individual and institution. Its calling: prisonization.

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• The commented walk creates a perceptive speech. We analyse the speech of all individual to revel the differences and the occurrences between all individual. After that, we will establish some correlation between an expressed perception and the structure of the architecture boundary. • The last analyse will try to do a correlation between the prisonization typology and the perceptive speech. For the purpose of revealing if the prisonization induces some specific perception. At the end, we can determine if some specific perception could be induced by architecture boundary or by the psychosocial relation with the prison.

Research development This paper presents a theoretical and phenomenological works about the perception in the prison environment and its correlation with the architecture. The main result is the definition of this global method. The interest of our method is to refer to several sciences and reflexions about the prison, thanks to the phenomenological philosophy which is not restricted to one field. The phenomenology is a global understanding of relation between people and world. Moreover the social relations in prison makes that the environmental ambient is difficult to analyse, and our method will try to address this issue. At this time, we experiment this method in five prisons. We have chosen some representative buildings of architectural penitentiary in France. The selection of the prisons concerned the period of design and refer to a penitentiary politics which implied a specific design programs. After the analysis of results, we could develop some knowledges for the prison architectural design. The development of prison architecture in France is more and more interested by problems of environmental ambient. We have already a relation with architect interested about the experimental results of this method. References Abraham Moles, Elisabeth Rohmer, Psychosociologie de l'espace. Condé-sur-Noireau: L'Harmattan, 2006. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception. Mesnil-sur-l'Estrée: 8-9

Gallimard, 2003. Eugène Minckowski, Le temps vécu. Vendôme: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995. Edmund Husser, L'idée de la phénoménologie. Vendôme: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000. Erving Goffman, Asiles – études sur la condition sociale des malades mentaux. Lonrai: Editions de Minuit, 2002. Jean François Augoyard, Elements pour une théorie des ambiances architecturales et urbaines in Ambiances architecturales et urbaines. Quercy: Editions Parenthèses, 1998. Jean-Pierre Péneau, Pascal Joanne, Ambiances et références du projet in Ambiances architecturales et urbaines. Quercy: Editions Parenthèses, 1998. Leslie Fairweather, Sean McConville, Prison Architecture - Policy, Design and Experience. Burlington: Architectural Press, 2003. Norman Johnston, Forms of constraint. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Donald Clemmer, The prison community. New York: Holt, 1940. S. Wheeler, Socialization in correctional communities. American Sociological Review, vol.26, N°5, p. 697-712, 1961.

Biography Ouard Thomas CERMA UMR CNRS 1563, Ecole d’Architecture de Nantes, Rue Massenet – BP81931, 44319 Nantes Cedex 3, France E-mail : [email protected]

I'm an architect graduate of the architectural school of Nantes (France). I have obtained the master degree of the Ecole Polytechnique de Nantes in 2005. I develop a Ph.D thesis about the architecture prison, specifically the influence of the social relation and architectural boundaries on the perception of ambient environment. I'm supervised by Pr. Loick Villerbu Professor of Universities Clinic psychology and psychopathology and director of Criminology and Social Sciences Institute (Rennes – France). This thesis is made in the CERMA Centre for Methodological Research in Architecture laboratory (www.cerma.archi.fr/). It's a laboratory architectural and urban ambient environment.

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