Architecture, health and modernism

Between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century, medical facilities such as asylums and sanatoriums were built. Their purpose was to isolate and treat patients affected by diseases as tuberculosis and lunacy. Tuberculosis was an infectious disease strongly linked with the new urban working class which lived in overcrowded houses with a big lack of sanitation. Even though there were various attempts by organizations as the Life Reform movement in Germany or the Garden City movement in The United Kingdom at improving health conditions, nothing changed much. As the working class was the most affected group by the disease, consequences on the European economy were inevitable. (Bryder, 1988) In the same period, a new cultural movement called modernism was taking place and its path had to cross inevitable with the problems that tuberculosis brought to light. This intersection played a great role in the establishment of the main principle of modernism, improve health and hygiene for everyone. (Atkinson, 2018) This situation caused major exponents of architecture, medicine and philosophy to join forces in order to fight this disease using design as the weapon. However, this was not the first time that medicine and architecture worked together. Indeed, architecture and medicine have been connected since the ancient past. Vitruvius during the first century BC insisted that all architects needed to study medicine stating that the sick could have been cured faster through design. Theories of medicine were integrated into architectural theories, making architecture a sort of branch of medicine. Design schools from the Renaissance, as “L’ Accademia delle arti del Disegno” in Florence, used dissected body as a central reference for architecture. While doctors studied the human body by dissecting it, architects understood building by drawing sections cuts of them. Even though Modern Architecture is often linked to concepts as modernisation in construction technologies and materials or functionalism, the sick body of a tuberculosis patient is what has driven its concepts. Indeed, if we overlay a map of the distribution of tuberculosis with one of the distributions of modern architecture, they would perfectly match. The engine for modernity was an illness. (Colomina, 2019) The beginning of the twentieth century saw the return of Romanticism ideals together as a holistic attitude towards nature and the experience of the unity of all life. This biologistic Neo-Romanticism, simply called Biozentrik or Biocentrism in German, was a reaction to nineteenth-century obsession with materialism and to its ideal that nature was driven by mechanical principles. The relation between nature and the inner self was fundamental in Biocentrism (Botar, 2011).

Architecture, health and modernism

Biocentrism holistic ideals reflected also in modern architecture, indeed tuberculosis sanatoriums were physical tributes to nature and its connection with the patient. This was visible in Alvar Alto’s design of the Paimio Sanatorium which will be analysed later in this paper. It is crucial to consider also another phenomenon who caused great losses to Europe, the First World War. People were traumatized by this event and architecture had to work on this psychological aspect. Adolf Loos, an Austrian architect, focused his studies on this aspect and his architecture was conceived as a shelter for the nerves of the post-war man. In his book “Ornament and crime” he argued that modern design should have had a sort of anaesthetic effect with its smooth surfaces and that modern man could not tolerate and did not need ornaments anymore, as they would have brought back memories when what they really wanted was a fresh start (Banham, 1960). This theory was followed by other architects of the period, as Frederick John Kiesler who wrote that after the end of the war people changed their habits, they started to get rid of what was a surplus in design and this was just the functionalism happening, a reaction to the overstuffing of the Victorian Age. The removal of ornaments in favour of smooth surfaces and more whiteness became a recognisable mark of modern architecture (Colomina, 2019) In 1882, German microbiologist Robert Koch discovered the tubercle bacillus. However, before this discovery, there was a medical book who attributed the cause of the disease to lack of exercise, sedentary indoor life, defective ventilation, deficiency of light and depressing emotions. Moreover, tuberculosis was thought as a wet disease produced by damp cities, the patient needed an environment to dry the inside of his body. The nineteenth-Century architecture was labelled as unhealthy and sun, light, ventilation, exercises, roof terraces, hygiene and whiteness were now seen as the cure of tuberculosis. As long with these concerns, in the late nineteenth century following raising concerns about fatigue a boost in outdoor exercise happened (Campbell, 2005). One of the most influent exponents of these concepts was Le Corbusier. He pointed his finger towards the traditional house, cause of debilitating effects of tuberculosis, and towards twentieth-century cities, guilty of being in a state of decline as they were still in the Middle Ages. In his book “Vers un architecture” he wrote, “The machine that we live in is an old coach full of tuberculosis”. Le Corbusier’s idea of the modern house was that of a machine for health that had its own medical devices, pilotis, columns that kept the structure raised from the humid ground where disease breeds, roof gardens, where people could exercise and

1. Aerial view of the Paimio Sanatorium (1933)

3. Le Corbusier exercising outdoor. (1933) Exercise was understood as a therapy against tuberculosis and fatigue and during the start of the tweentieth century there was an enournmous increase in outdoor exercise. It was promoted by influent figures, and Le Corbusier was one of them. 2. Dom-Ino house by Le Corbusier. (1914). This house was a modular structure made of concrete that eliminated load-bearing walls and gave more freedom to the designer. It became crucial in Le Corbusier and modernism architecture.

Architecture, health and modernism

sunbathe, glass walls, in order to gain as much sunlight as possible in the interior of the house and last fresh air, outdoor air consistently circulating inside the house and ready to be used by lung (Le Corbusier, 1985). These became the main features of modern architecture design and they were used independently in house design and medical facilities as Sanatoriums. Many modern architects designed a Sanatorium during their career. The sanatorium was seen as a structure where architects, often in collaborations with doctors, could test new materials and techniques. They were usually placed away from the local community, often in forests or mountainsides, in order to create a connection between building, patient and nature but also to try to keep the disease away from the cities. As the protracted exposure to the sun was considered as the best available cure to Tuberculosis, these buildings were designed in order to catch as much light as possible, making them solar devices. The architect Andre Farde took this concept to the extreme by designing a revolving sanatorium in 1930. It was raised sixteen meters from the ground, it was long twenty-five meters and it constantly turned towards the sun. Sanatoriums were a revolution under the social aspect. Until late nineteenth-century, hospitals were medical facilities for the poor, while rich people were treated at home, but with the advent of Sanatoriums and their modern designs, the aristocracy started spending long period of time in these facilities (Colomina, 2019). In 1910 in Davos, a little town in the Swiss Alps, there were twenty-six sanatoriums, making it the epicentre of the modern cure. One of these sanatoriums was The Schatzalp, the first building to be constructed of concrete and steel in Switzerland and became the model for the modern Sanatorium. It was claimed to have the most advanced medical treatments available, which coincided with the most advanced technology in modern architecture. It had a hundred meters long façade and huge terraces where patients spent most of their time, even during the winter. (Overy, 2007) The Wald-Sanatorium, situated in Davos as well, housed Katia Mann, wife of Thomas Mann that inspired him to write The Magic Mountain, a novel set in a Swiss Sanatorium. (Colomina, 2019)

4. Patients sunbathing in the terrace of the Paimio Sanatorium.(1933)

5. Patients sunbathing in the revolving sanatorium. Aix-Les-Bains. 1930.