Spaces for madness

Psychiatric institutions in Brazil were founded as a result of a process of authoritarian urban regulation, which rounded up countless people in order to restore them to social life in accordance with the hygienist and eugenic policies of the 20th century. Psychiatric hospitals were designed to isolate, control and monitor their inmates, where mistreatment was constant and deaths were frequent. The situation was only reversed with the implementation of the Psychiatric Reform, which granted citizenship to the mentally disabled and opened the doors of the asylum. This process still has the delicate role of dealing with the hostility present in the population, which regards cognitive disorders as something dangerous or incapable. Rethinking the planning of therapeutic environments in a way that dismantles the archetype of the psychiatric clinic is an example of how the study of this scenario in Architecture and Urbanism is important for deconstructing paradigms that link madness. Therefore, the work will use the Minas Gerais State Hospital Foundation (FHEMIG) as a case study, the first psychiatric hospital founded in Minas Gerais, located in the city of Barbacena.

Autorentext

Sarah is an architect and urban planner who graduated from the Federal University of São João del Rei (UFSJ), Brazil. She received a scholarship from the Science without Borders program and also studied at the University of Newcastle in Australia. She is currently a master's student in the Postgraduate Program in the Built Environment (PROAC) at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF).