[A surveillance and hierarchical control] architecture that is no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or to observe the external space (cf, the geometry of fortresses), but to permit an internal, articulated and detailed control - to render visible those who are inside it;
in more general terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals:
- to act on those it shelters,
- to provide a hold on their conduct,
- to carry the effects of power right to them,
- to make it possible to know them, to alter them.
Stones can make people docile and knowable. The old simple schemaof confinement and enclosure - thick walls, a heavy gate that prevents entering or leaving- began to be replaced by the calculation of openings, of filled and empty spaces, passages and transparencies.
Foucault has written tomes on this topic — the transformation of the ‘architectures of surveillance and control’ and its internalization as a means of unconscious self-policing. He didn’t live to see the internet and the pervasively present microphones and cameras and “surveillance capitalism”, but he did write the book on it.
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See also (for a contemporary consideration of Foucault’s “Panopticon”):
Foucault, Power and the Modern Panopticon, Connor Sheridan , 2016 (thesis)
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