Pentagon Petal: from Pain to Pleasure

Speakers: Fran Cottell (University of the Arts London) and Marianne Mueller (Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design)

About the seminar:

In 1799 Jeremy Bentham purchased a site at Millbank to erect his experimental panopticon prison. This plan was abandoned and in 1813 construction began for yet another panopticon: the Millbank Penitentiary. The talk uses this recently completed art and architecture project at Millbank to reflect on forms of discipline, pain and pleasure and architecture’s power to orchestrate social modes. ‘Pentagon Petal’ reinterpreted the Bentham influenced floor plan of Millbank prison into a flower shaped bench to adjust its impact from facilitating social control / pain to informal and voluntary uses / pleasure.

Book your place at this event