L’asile public des aliénées de Bordeaux : hygiénisme en psychiatrie et rationalisme architectural

Abstract

The public lunatic asylum at Bordeaux ; psychiatric hygiemsm and architectural rationalism. In 1885, the board of commissioners of the Saint-Jean lunatic asylum at Bordeaux recognised the degradation of the conditions in which the mentally sick were confined in this hospital, and decided to transfer the institution to another property, on the outskirts of the city, the Château Picon. The Château itself was set aside for the wealthy patients whilst an entirely new asylum was constructed for the poor. The architect chosen was Jean-Jacques Valleton (1841-1916), a pupil of Abadie. This architect had studied the theories of his time on mental health and was particularly inspired by a text written in 1818 by J. Esquirol, head doctor at the Charenton asylum. He also studied asylums built in France and England. The construction work started in 1887 and was completed in 1890. The article describes the new buildings and the way they were arranged in isolated pavilions, each one corresponding with a defined category of mental illness : slight, tranquil convalescent, semi-tranquil, semi-agitated, agitated, furious, epileptic. A circulation gallery ran through the ensemble, with the pavilions branching off it like teeth from a pair of combs. The decoration, of Gothic inspiration, is very muted, in keeping with theories on mental health at the time which had long since denounced the pernicious influence of sculpted motifs on the mentally deranged.