I have a new interest. Typically this is a good thing for me. I move between obsessions and when I don't have one I get bored. Right now I'm interested in Jeremy Bentham - utilitarian philosopher, jurist, social critic, inventor of the panopticon and many other titles besides. Fascinating guy and one of the most prodigious commentators the Industrial Revolution produced. I'm interested in him because he came to architecture in an ass-backward way.
Old Bentham was right at the center of the political, economic, and social upheavals that accompanied the Industrial Revolution. And, being a very smart guy, figured out the Industrial Revolution wasn't really industrial at all. The changes between say 1750 and 1850 primarily in England but exported to first France, then the rest of Europe and England's colonies in North America are described as the Industrial Revolution because the people who first examined them from arm's length were historians in the early 20th century. And, for them, the most important product of those changes was the factory system and industrialization. Of course, that wasn't the only product. Someone looking at those years now would probably not see factories as the most important change - factories just aren't that important anymore. Yes, they completely changed the way we produce goods and yes, they raised the material standard of living immensely but factories have, to a large degree, been left behind. The industrial system invented during the Industrial Revolution is obsolete. Massive factories just aren't required for that many things anymore. The production of most things happens in little production centers that are either post-industrial (computer chips and hi-tec shit) or pre-industrial (garment factories and most consumer products).
For us, in our current circumstance, the most important development of the 100 years between 1750 and 1850 was the new mode of capital concentration and the related social factors, most of which Bentham was among the first to see or the first to try to influence. It's strange but most architectural histories cast Bentham as a hawkish unltra-conservative who was fascinated with prisons because he despised the lower classes. The opposite is more correct. Bentham was concerned by the fact the most efficient means of increasing productivity (one measure of wealth) is to concentrate capital in a few hands and pauperize the rest of the population. This is something we know a great deal about these days. That Bentham saw it as it was happening is a great credit to his perspicacity. Bentham was interested in prisons because he wanted to make them more humane. He designed his cooperatives and company towns for the same reasons. He arrived at architecture as the specific answer to a general social problem - one of a very short list of people who have done so.
I would like to dedicate some time to studying Bentham - his times, opinions, philosophy, contribution to both architecture and politics. The best place to do this is at University College London (UCL). Unfortunately, even if I could secure admission to UCL I would have to pay more per semester than I have ever earned in a year.
UCL isn't outrageously expensive if the comparison is strictly between first-rank graduate programs. By any other standard, it's insane. Tuition at most graduate programs in countries that don't heavily subsidize (Canada, the oil rich Middle Eastern countries, and the wonderfully socialist Scandinavian nations) is approximately $50 000 per semester, including living expenses. Some schools have the wonderfully absurd clause that the student can't pay tuition themselves, they have to get scholarships. My feelings about that are mixed; it is meant to increase the school's prestige but also prevents simple wealth from influencing the admission policy. Of course, that's only in a perfect world. In this world, wealth influences everything.
If I was 20 again I could perhaps face the idea of burdening myself with hundreds of thousands of dollars student debt with the confidence, ignorance, and all the counter-factual hope of youth. But I'm not 20. I'm middle aged. I have struggled out from under one massive debt burden. The idea of assuming another for no better reason than I am interested in something is ridiculous. Paradoxically, "no better reason than I am interested" is the best possible reason to want to study something. So I possess the best possible reason for doing something and that reason prevents me from doing it. Joseph Heller had a name for this situation.
