JAIL-PRISON AND COURT OF PUNTA ARENAS: FROM PREFIGURATION TO THE CONFIGURATION OF A PRISON SPACE

Between the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century, the territory of Magallanes, and particularly Punta Arenas city, was endowed with new institutional buildings, among which there were the Court and the Jail-Prison. To contribute to the knowledge of what we have called penitentiary and judicial complex, we deeply analysed various bibliographic and graphical sources and made hypotheses related to their various spatial configurations suggesting a series of planimetric designs. In order to understand the transformations that happened to this complex, we investigated the history of penitentiary architecture and various historical documents that shed light on the paths underlying the permanent reconfiguration of this building that has a strong symbolic weight in the city.