Demolishing the Maze

The Maze prison was opened in 1976 at the height of the conflict in Northern Ireland between British security forces and Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries. Its function was to contain and isolate political prisoners who had been detained without trial after the introduction of special powers in 1971 and treat them as ordinary criminals. In this way the Maze was devised as an architectural solution to an armed conflict. Its demolition is a testimony to its failure.

I first visited the Maze late in 2002, a year after all the prisoners had been released as part of the Good Friday peace agreement. At that time the prison was still functional, in so far as it was empty but not closed, kept ready for use should the need arise. It symbolized a limbo period in Northern Ireland: potentially the end of thirty years of conflict, but just as possibly the beginning of a new one.

In its construction, the Maze was an architectural version of a Russian doll: a small enclosed space encased by a slightly larger one, then that encased by another, then another and another, eventually covering an area of almost 360 acres, surrounded by a perimeter wall over two-and-a-half miles long. To experience the Maze was to experience a journey of constant, relentless repetition on a vast scale, resulting in a feeling of total disorientation. This was exactly what it was designed to do to those within it.

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