Quarantine(d) space: Urla-Izmir (Smyrna) Island

Abstract

Even in the twenty-first century, pandemics lead to a particular kind of spatial organization, such as quarantine. The outbreak of the contamination era re-justifies the medicalization of spaces. Throughout history, there have been several attempts to design spaces for contagious diseases and pandemic situations all over the world—quarantine islands, lazarettos, and healthcare architecture. In the nineteenth century, the first quarantine procedures started in the Ottoman Empire, and Urla-Izmir (Smyrna) island was established as one of the examples of the quarantine system. This study investigates the architecture organization of the quarantine island as an example of a “panoptic” space.