I came across this picture a few weeks ago from a link off the Marginal Revolution blog. It is a compound of Panopticon style prisons that were built in Cuba during one of the authoritarian regimes that preceded Castro.
I first learned about Panopticon prisons in a Philosophy class in college.
They represent a model for the possibility of continuous surveillance and observation--and consequently enjoy a position of strong symbolic significance in modern thinking. As a building type for penal architecture, they have been less successful (too much wasted space inside and circular geometries are notoriously unadaptable). They would make a good thesis project at an architecture school where there was a particularly ironic appreciation of theory. To my knowledge, very few have been built and this is probably the most extensive complex.
My only original observation is that the landscape around this prison is extradorinarily beautiful. When things in Cuba change, probably in less than ten years, I wonder what commercial or institutional development will happen here. Possibly, because it's in a remote location, it will consequently decay over time--enjoying a brief period as a mild tourist attraction for those people who venture inland.
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