Psychiatric hospital at Racconigi, Italy
The places that have most struck Margaine are abandoned asylums. “Psychiatric institutions are taboo, no one really knows what they’re like,” he says. “Inside, there’s a legacy of a past life – you can still see padded cells, straitjackets, electroshock machines. You know they exist but when you see them for real it’s different – it’s a powerful experience to explore that kind of building.” This hospital opened in 1871 and closed for good in 1998. The building itself offers insight into what happened there. “There is a special architecture in an asylum – the architecture was part of the therapy. It’s part of the story of the building.”