Territorio, controllo, libertà

Abstract

In this article we want to argue about architecture response, in relatively recent times, to a problem that relates to international imprisoning jurisprudence which requires the reconciliation of conflicting terms. Architects have put forward proposals on prison for centuries (among others Palladio, Milizia and Alberti), but it is with the drafting of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms that architecture has explicitly faced two opposing criteria, i.e. freedom and control. Since 1950, there has been an attempt to settle and harmonise the relationship between Art. 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by the United Nations (OHCHR) two years earlier, inherent in the connaturality of human freedom and Art. 5 from the aforementioned European Convention which suggests terms of acceptability for prisons. A solution to this antinomy could be offered by architecture through the concepts of privacy and territoriality, considered by the Nelson Mandela Rules in 2015.