Panopticon House, Cape Otway, Victoria Real Estate Building, Australian Retreat, Architecture Images
Panopticon House in Cape Otway, Victoria
25 Sep 2020
Panopticon House
Architects: Bild Architecture
Location: Cape Otway, Victoria, Australia

The Panopticon House project is a hybrid of modernist and classical rural villa ideals, exploring the house as figured object versus the disappearing enclosure. Located in rural Victoria, on a prominent hilltop with panoramic views across the surrounding landscape, the Great Southern Ocean, Bass Strait and the Tasman Ocean. The site and program recall the classical villa however a key element of the client brief was to minimize interruption to the views of the surrounding landscape. The house was in effect to become a device for seeing out ? a ?Panopticon?, whose primary function was that of observation.
Jeremy Bentham?s original 18th century Panopticon has been used as a model for a wide range of institutional buildings, including the reading room of the Victorian State library. However, was latter criticized by Michel Foucault and others as mechanism for manifesting and reinforcing power imbalances. In the context however, the relationship between the observer/observed, is that between architecture/landscape, emphasizing the potential of architecture as a device for seeing.

This desire recalls the Farnsworth house, itself arguably a continuation of the classical villa tradition – however with the critical departure of the ...