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What Tuberculosis did for Modernism: The Influence of a Curative Environment on Modernist Design and Architecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Margaret Campbell
Margaret Campbell
Affiliation:
NDD, 4 Dovecot Loan, Edinburgh EH14 2LT, UK
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From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, specialist institutions such as sanatoria and asylums were established. In these, patients could be separated and isolated from the community and provided with the control and management of specific medical conditions such as tuberculosis and lunacy. At the start of this period, tuberculosis was a disease closely associated with the rapid growth of industrialization and a poorly nourished urban working class who lived in insalubrious, overcrowded conditions. By the early twentieth century, despite attempts by reforming socialist organizations such as the Garden City movement in England or the Life Reform movement in Germany to introduce healthier housing, these conditions had changed little. As the disease was more prevalent in younger men and women of working age, the financial drain on the European economy was considerable. By this time, research and treatment of the disease had coincided with the advent of modernism. This was a cultural movement that in architecture and applied design involved the integration of form with social purpose. It also attempted to create a new classless and hygienic lifestyle with socialist values.

Type
Articles
Information
Medical History , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , 01 October 2005 , pp. 463 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2005. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 In late nineteenth-century Germany, the need for a healthy work force led to the introduction of workers' health insurance schemes, started in Britain in 1911. The poor health status of recruits for the Boer War (TB was cited as a dominant factor) led to measures to improve general health standards. See Linda Bryder, Below the magic mountain, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988, p. 22.

2Edinburgh Evening News, 16 Dec 2002, and ‘Inside Science’, Supplement 155, New Scientist, 9 Nov 2002.

3 Sir Arthur Bliss (1891–1975), English conductor and composer, Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music. In the 1930s, his works included musical scores for contemporary operas and ballets (Miracle in the Gorbals and Checkmate) and film music (Things to come and Conquest of the air).

4 Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in dreams: fashion and modernity, London, Virago, 1985, p. 131.

5 P Reyner Banham, Theory and design in the first machine age, London, Architectural Press, 1960, and Richard Weston, Modernism, London, Phaidon, 2002. Both explore the tenets of modernism. See also J M Richards, An introduction to modern architecture, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1940, for a contemporary view on modernist buildings.

6 Margaret Campbell, ‘Architecture of hope: hope for a cure. Tuberculosis, a design response’, MPhil thesis, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, 1999.

7 In 1840, George Bodington (1799–1882), a Warwickshire physician, published An essay on the treatment and cure of pulmonary consumption. His method was based on rest in the open air and a good diet. Later, he set up a small treatment centre in Sutton Coldfield, where his therapeutic regime was conducted, but not exclusively, for patients with tuberculosis. Hermann Brehmer (1826–89), a German (Silesian) physician, whose teacher, J L Schonlein, coined the word “tuberculosis”. Brehmer's sanatorium at Görbersdorf was established in 1859. Peter Dettweiler (1837–1904) was both a patient and a student of Brehmer. He was so impressed with the success of the Freiluftkur that, in 1876, he founded his own sanatorium in the Taunus Mountains at Falkenstein near Frankfurt. A German chest physician, Otto Walther, situated his sanatorium or Colonie (1888) in the valley of the river Nordrach in Ansach, near Freiburg. Operated on a spartan regime, it emphasized the benefits of outdoor living. Otto Walther, ‘The advantages of a colony sanatorium’, British Journal of Tuberculosis, 1907, 1 (3): 307.

8 Bryder, op. cit., note 1 above, is an excellent account of the social history of tuberculosis in twentieth-century Britain.

9 Margaret Campbell, ‘Therapeutic gardens’, Historic Gardens Review, Winter, 1998–9, pp. 27–34.

10 The cure de silence, a variation of the “Cure” by which seriously ill patients, when first admitted to the sanatorium, were forbidden to talk. In the course of recovery, whispering was allowed and then a cautious resumption to normal levels of speech.

11 N Bullock and J Read, The movement for housing reform in Germany and France 1840–1914, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 350–1.

12 R Burridge and D Ormandy (eds), Unhealthy housing: research, remedies and reform, London, E & F N Spon, 1993, pp. 311–12.

13 See Bullock and Read, op. cit., note 11 above, pp. 371, for reference to the garden city and cité jardin.

14 Le Corbusier, City of tomorrow: and its planning, transl. Frederick Etchells (from the 8th ed. of Urbanisme, Paris, Editions G Crès, 1924), 3rd ed., London, Architectural Press, 1977, pp. 215–16.

15 While Le Corbusier regarded the house as a “machine for living in”, the machine concept was not confined to French modernism, as in the USA, “machine aesthetics” referred to a popular description of products manufactured between 1920 and 1940. This period is also termed as the “Machine Age”.

16 In 1927, an exhibition of houses intended to demonstrate the environmental advantages of modernist functional design (Weissenhofsiedlung) was organized by the Deutsches Werkbund, an organization that promoted German design and industry. The director-general of the project was Mies van der Rohe; included among the designs were some by Gropius and Le Corbusier.

17 Walter Gropius (1883–1969) was the first director of the progressive school of design and architecture at Weimar, the Bauhaus. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) was the third director of the Bauhaus. Both later settled in the US. Mies coined the minimalist phrase “less is more”.

18 In the Netherlands, modernism was identified with a commitment to the efficiency and precision of the machine. The ideals of the movement were published in its journal, De Stijl (The Style), but Dutch modernist architecture and design were also overlaid with a theosophical mysticism.

19 Britain retained an architectural loyalty to the Arts and Crafts movement and, despite many innovative features, Charles Holden's King Edward VII Sanatorium, Midhurst, Sussex (1903–4), was indicative of this adherence. Architectural Review, June 1906, 19: 278–82.

20 “Moderne” was the term used to distinguish purist modernism from stylistic corruption.

21 British modernism was represented by the Twentieth Century Group (1930), Unit One (1933) and the Modern Architectural Research Group (1933). Members of Unit One included artists such as Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore and architects Colin Lucas and Wells Coates; they published Unit One: the modern movement in English architecture, painting and sculpture, ed. Herbert Read, London, Cassell, 1934. The Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS) was led by Wells Coates, Maxwell Fry and Frederick Yorke. Other members included Amyas Connell, Basil Ward, Colin Lucas, together with Architectural Review contributors, Morton Shand, John Gloag and the poet John Betjeman. Later, in the 1930s, Berthold Lubetkin, Serge Chermayeff, John Summerson and the art critic Herbert Read joined the group. MARS exerted an important influence on British architecture from 1933 to 1957.

22 E Maxwell Fry (1899–1987) was trained at the Liverpool School of Architecture, whose director was the forward thinking C H Reilly.

23 E Maxwell Fry, ‘Harmony out of discord’, RIBA Journal, Dec. 1979: 526–9, p. 527.

24 Jack Pritchard (1899–1992), an economist and engineer and a passionate proponent for modernism, was the founder of Isokon, a progressive furniture design company. In 1934, he and Philip Morton Shand were responsible for assisting Walter Gropius's escape to freedom from Germany to England.

25 In 1932, Lubetkin designed a chest (TB) clinic (not built), the East Ham Chest Clinic for Dr Philip Ellman and the Finchley Health Centre (1935–8), where the Tuberculosis Clinic occupied one complete wing of the ground floor. Peter Coe and Malcolm Reading, Lubetkin and Tecton, architecture and social commitment, London, Arts Council of Great Britain, 1981, pp. 112–13; and Malcolm Reading and Peter Coe, Lubetkin and Tecton: an architectural study, London, Triangle Architectural Publishing, 1992, pp. 40–1.

26 Between 1934 and 1938, Walter Gropius was involved in a number of projects with Maxwell Fry, including the Impington Village College, Cambridgeshire (1936–9).

27 These buildings were discussed and illustrated in The Architects' Journal, 24 June 1937, p. 1152.

28 A deputation of medical staff, administrators and architects visited Switzerland to inspect “the latest sanatoria in Davos”: Mary P Shepherd, Heart of Harefield: the story of a hospital, London, Quiller Press, 1990, p. 48. Among the best British modernist sanatoria of this period were Infectious Diseases Hospital in Hawkhead Road, Paisley, Strathclyde (Tuberculosis pavilion G), by Thomas Tait (1935–8), Sully Tuberculosis Hospital, Glamorgan, South Wales, by William Pite, Son and Fairweather (1931–35) and Harefield County Sanatorium, Middlesex, designed by a team of Middlesex County Council architects (1935–37).

29 Metal window frames were produced by Crittall Manufacturing Company, a firm with modernist ideas. See F J Mead, Silver End: the making of an Essex village, London, North East London Polytechnic, 1989.

30 In 1903, Rollier set up a tuberculosis clinic at Leysin, Switzerland, for sunlight therapy. Gauvain, who was medical superintendent of Lord Mayor Treloar's Home for Crippled Children, Alton, advocated the therapy for cases of “surgical tuberculosis”, mainly bones, joints and the skin (lupus vulgaris). See Bryder, op. cit., note 1 above, pp. 188–90.

31 M H J Schoenmaekers was a Dutch theosophist and mathematician, influential through his theoretical writings such as Het nieuwe wereldbeeld (The New Image of the World) on De Stijl, Neo-Plasticism (nieuwe beelding) and the work of Piet Mondrian. Jan Duiker (1890–1935) was one of the leading exponents in the Dutch New Movement whose principal belief was that modern architecture could have a positive effect on society, and its aim was to create good functional housing.

32 J Duiker, ‘Berlage en de “Nieuwe Zakelijkheid”’, De 8 en Opbouw, 1932, 1: 43–51, cited in Aimee de Back, Sabine Berndsen and Camiel Berns, Een zeer aangenaam verblijf: het dienstbodenhuis van J Duiker op sanatorium Zonnestraal. A space of their own: the servants' house by J Duiker at Zonnestraal sanatorium, Rotterdam, 010 Publishers, 1996, p. 15.

33 The phrase Licht und Luft was first used in the eighteenth century by the German poet, Gottfried August Bürger in his sonnet Der versetzte Himme (‘Licht und Luft des Himmels zu erschauen’). Later, in 1898, the phrase was used by the German novelist Paul Scheerbart in Ver Sacrum, the progressive Viennese journal of the breakaway design group, the Secession.

34 De Back, Berndsen and Berns, op. cit., note 32 above, pp. 13–15, 20.

35 For example, see the new approach to social housing by the Amsterdam School at Spaarndammerbuurt neighbourhood in Amsterdam west with blocks by Michel de Klerk (1915). Maristella Casciato, The Amsterdam School, Rotterdam, 010 Publishers, 1996, pp. 20–6, 156–70.

36 Frank Ryan, Tuberculosis: the greatest story never told, Bromsgrove, Swift Publishers, 1992, pp. 92, 245.

37 See Eduard Neumann, Davos und seine Privatsanatorien, Bern, 1917, and Gesellschaft für Schweizerische Kunstgeschichte (ed.), Inventar der neueren Schweizer Architektur: INSA: 1850–1920, Bern, Die Gesellschaft, 1982/83, p. 355.

38 Erwin Poeschel (1884–1965), a German art historian and jurist who lived in Davos from 1913 to 1927. The diagrams show a pitched-roof extending upwards as an additional story, with the roof space ventilated above the joists. A 2cm thick layer of cork between the ceiling and the roof provided insulation. The roof has a fall of 1 in 200, draining to an internal pipe. This meant that, when the snow melted, instead of dripping down to the gutter and creating either a mini-avalanche or a dagger-like icicle, the water ran off safely inside the building.

39 Erwin Poeschel, ‘Das Flache Dach im Davos’, Das Werk, Zurich, 1928, 15: pp. 102–9, idem, ‘Das Flache Dach im Hochgebirge’, Der Baumeister: Monatshefte für Architektur und Baupraxis, 1931, 29 (1): 38–44.

40 See Le Corbusier, Towards a new architecture, transl. Frederick Etchells (from 13th French ed.), London, Architectural Press, 1970.

41 Ibid., p. 215.

42 Ibid., p. 216.

43 Peter Behrens (1868–1940), architect and industrial designer, strongly influenced several leading modernist architects, including Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. Karin Kirsch, in Weissenhofsiedlung: experimental housing built for the Deutscher Werkbund, Stuttgart, 1927, New York, Rizzoli, 1989, p. 177, notes that few “critics perceived and mentioned Behrens's principal concern, the promotion of health: the healing of so great a social evil as tuberculosis through building reform”.

44Weissenhofsiedlung or Weissenhof Siedlung: both forms are used.

45 Peter Behrens, ‘Terrassen am Haus: Deutscher Werkbund’, Bau und Wohnung, Stuttgart, 1927, quoted by Alan Windsor, Peter Behrens, architect and designer 1868–1940, London, Architectural Press, 1981, p. 164.

46 New Ways was Britain's first modernist private house. See also Louise Campbell, ‘Patrons of the modern house’, in The modern house revisited, Twentieth Century Architecture 2, Journal of the Twentieth Century Society, London, Twentieth Century Society, 1996, pp. 43–50.

47 Tim Dawson, ‘Bright ideas for stylish housing’, Ecosse supplement, Sunday Times, 24 Aug. 1997, p. 12.

48 Rudolph Schindler's contributions to Dr Lovell's column, ‘Care of the body’, Los Angeles Times, Sunday Magazine Section, between March and May 1926.

49 Although born and trained in Vienna, Richard Neutra (1892–1970) went to the US in 1923 and worked for a short period with Frank Lloyd Wright. His architecture epitomized “international Modernism, European Modern Movement and American freedom”. See Richard Neutra, ‘Aesthetics and the open air’, The Studio, 1930, 99: 79–84, p. 82. See also Elizabeth A T Smith and Michael Darling (eds), The architecture of R M Schindler, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, and New York, Harry W Abrams, 2001, pp. 12, 120–2; and Barbara Lamprecht, Richard Neutra 1892–1970: survival through design, Cologne and London, Taschen, 2004, pp. 22–7.

50 Royal Victoria Dispensary, ‘The consumptives' home under care of the Dispensary Nurse’, University of Edinburgh Library, Medical Archive, T.B. slides, No. 23.

51 Professor Jacques Gulber (Lausanne), ‘Henri Sauvage’, a paper given to the Architectural Association, June 1979, and printed in Architectural Design, 1979, 49 (2): 70–2.

52 See Richard Döcker, Terrassentyp, Stuttgart, Akademie Verlag, 1929.

53 Theo van Doesburg, On European architecture, transl. Charlotte I Loeb and Arthur L Loeb, Basel and Boston, Birkhäuser, 1990, pp. 313–16.

54 Y J Oswald, ‘La Montagne magique crepuscule de la belle époque: l'univers sanatorial de Davos avant la grande guerre’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Strasbourg, 1993; his illustrations 28 and 29 explain this feature.

55 ‘Sully Tuberculosis Hospital, Glamorgan’, Architect and Building News, 11 Jan. 1935: 141: 40–4, and Architect's Journal, 22 Oct. 1936, 84: 555–60, ibid., 24 June 1937, 85: 1132–34, p. 1134.

56 Margaret Campbell, ‘Awfie cauld an' awfie lonely’, Things, Summer 1998, No. 8: 32–47.

57 ‘The financial aspect of the open air treatment, Health Resort, 1903, 1 (5): 148–50, 149.

58Country Life, 10 Nov. 1983, 174 (4499): 1332.

59 These shelters were also used at Sanatorium Schatzalp, and at Dr Hans Philippi's Internationales Sanatorium (1905).

60 ‘Revolving Shelter, City Hospital’, University of Edinburgh Library, Medical Archive, T.B. slides, Nos. 99 and 101.

61 ‘Notes: Home treatment of the consumptive, Br J. Tuberculosis, 1912, 6 (3): 200.

62 They were often made in separate sections so that the packaged shelter could be carried along narrow alleyways or up the tenement stairs to be erected in a backyard or on a flat roof; they had appropriate names, such as “Street Shelter” (1912) or “Open-Air Room” (1914). See Bryder, op. cit, note 1 above, p. 225, and M Campbell, op. cit., note 56 above, p. 38.

63 See trade catalogues such as Boulton & Paul's Shelters and Chalets (1912). Boulton & Paul's company archives are deposited at the Norfolk Record Office, The Archive Centre, Martineau Lane, Norwich.

64 This company is now Amdega Limited, Darlington.

65 The Richardson Archive is held at the University of Newcastle.

66 Firms such as the Portable Building Company of Fleetwood, Speirs and Company of Glasgow, Boulton & Paul of Norwich, and Brown and Lilley of Reading.

67 Margaret Campbell, ‘Therapy or leisure; the chaise-longue, a versatile recliner’, Journal of Design History, 1999, 12 (4): 327–43.

68 The concept of the “leisure class” was expounded by Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), an American economist of Norwegian parents. In his influential book, The theory of the leisure class (1899), he introduced the concept of “conspicuous consumption” and the notion that the leisured class maintains its identity through a distinctive mode of relaxation.

69 By 1869, Gebrüder Thonet was the largest of the Viennese manufacturers of bentwood furniture, despite the non-renewal of the patent that it had taken out in 1856. Its main rival, the Viennese furniture manufacturer Jacob & Josef Kohn, was well established by 1870. By 1900, it had matched Kohn's production capacity of 4000 pieces a day. See Christopher Wilk, Thonet: 150 years of furniture, Woodbury, NY, and London, Barron's Publishing, 1980, pp. 22–8, 49–9, 88–90; G Candilis, A Blomstedt, T Frangoulis, M I Amorin, Bugholzmöbel=Meubles en bois courgé=Bent wood furniture, Stuttgart, Karl Krämer, 1984, pp. 6–24, 88–90; Ghenete Zelleke, Eva B Ottilinger, Nina Stritzler, Against the grain: bentwood furniture from the collection of Fern and Manfred Steinfeld, Chicago, IL, Art Institute of Chicago, 1993, see p. 74 for Schlafsofas as used in TB sanatoria, and Eva B Ottilinger, ‘Bentwood furniture production’, in ibid., pp. 25–41.

70 For further information about other Central European manufacturers of bentwood furniture, see Furniture History, 1992, 28: 188–93.

71 The Davos family firm of Graf now manufactures this recliner: Heinrich Graf, Talstr.12, Davos-Platz, Switzerland.

72 Thomas Mann, The magic mountain, transl. H T Lowe-Porter, 2 vols, London, Martin Secker, 1927, vol. 1, pp. 87–88. This recliner and the sleeping sack are included in a permanent exhibition in the Blauer Heinrich Museum, at the Berghotel Schatzalp, Davos Platz.

73 Ibid., p. 85.

74 This sanatorium was the internationally acclaimed modernist building by Alvar Aalto (1929–33).

75 The scrolls were Aalto's version of a coil spring that added resilience to the plywood structure.

76 In Edinburgh in July 2004, a scroll chair (c.1936) was sold at auction for £7000.

77 In 1935, Pritchard established the Isokon Furniture Company to manufacture designs for his various projects. Many of the original designs made and sold by Isokon are now produced and marketed by the Windmill Furniture, Chiswick, London. For further information, see Bridget Gillies, Michael St John and Deirdre Sharp (compilers), The Pritchard papers: a guide to the papers of John Craven Pritchard (1899–1992), Norwich, University of East Anglia, 1998.

78 The Pritchard Papers, University of East Anglia, PP18/4/5/26.

79 There has been a long-standing debate about who designed LC1, but it is now acknowledged that Perriand was the innovator, with her chaise longue à relage continu, B306 (1928). Le Corbusier revised the design as B306–0 in 1930, when it was manufactured by Thonet-Paris.

80 As no further references to this name have been found, “Dr Pascaud” may be a fictitious name used as a marketing device. Le Corbusier Archives, L'Esprit nouveau, Fondation Le Corbusier (FLC), Villa La Roche, Paris.

81 In the bathroom of the Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier installed a mosaic-covered bench with a similar profile to that of LC1 recliner.

82 Le Corbusier, City of tomorrow, op. cit., note 14 above, p. 86.

83 Le Corbusier, L'Esprit nouveau, N0 11/12, Fondation Le Corbusier, and Urbanisme, Paris, 1924, p. 641; “le lieu utile pour la méditation”, comes from Le Corbusier, Almanach de l'architecture moderne, Paris G Crès, 1925, p. 29.

84 Jan Molema, Jan Duiker, Barcelona, Gustavo Gilli, 1989, pp. 70–1. Similar occupational schemes were organized in many publicly funded British sanatoria and in Remploy factories. See Bryder, op. cit., note 1 above, chs 2, 6 and 8.

85 The Finnish furniture manufacturing company, Artek, was established by Aalto to manufacture furniture to his designs for specific projects including those for the sanatorium at Paimio. The scroll chair was Model No. 41 and is included with others in Artek's current catalogue.