Neues Bauen and hygiene : a mutually profitable relationship investigated in relation to the medical doctor Friedrich Wolf

• Main Author: Flototto, Christina K. M.
• Published: University of Edinburgh 2003
• Subjects: 720.1
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.509594

This thesis examines the interrelationship of hygiene and modernist architecture (Neues Bauen) in Germany in the early twentieth century. The thesis proposes that the role of hygiene in the architecture of Neues Bauen progressed from its initial position as a purely functional consideration, into a design element, and finally established itself as an integral part of the aesthetic of Neues Bauen. A further proposition is that both the hygienists and the modernist architects of Neues Bauen consciously exploited this overlap in their respective disciplines. Following two introductory chapters, different aspects of the interrelation between hygiene and architecture will be examined in particular relation to the medical doctor, Friedrich Wolf (1888-1953), who can be seen as the pivotal figure within a whole network of hygienic-architectural exchange. Chapter One describes how infectious diseases generate basic hygienic architectural types (the hospital and sanatorium), and how these became a precedent for modem architectural design. Chapter Two demonstrates how the hygienic criteria of the hospital and the sanatorium became integrated into residential architecture, ultimately resulting in the residential housing of Neues Bauen. Focusing on Friedrich Wolf, Chapter Three documents the biographical interconnections between hygienists and the leading architects of Neues Bauen, and examines the mutual influence that they exerted on one another. The primary objective of Chapter Four is an analysis of the chapter in Friedrich Wolf's medical advice book Die Natur als Arzt and Helfer (Nature as Doctor and Helper) of 1928, in which he portrays Neues Bauen as the prototype of ideal hygienic architecture. Chapter Five deals with Wolfs definition of architecture as hygienic shell, surrounding and determining the man within, and his classification of this shell within a self-contained system of healing, concluding with his analogies of the `New Man' and of Neues Bauen. Chapter Six reveals the specific mechanisms that enabled hygienists and doctors such as Friedrich Wolf to `sell` Neues Bauen as a prototypically hygienic architecture, whilst at the same time furthering their personal goals. Finally, this chapter considers the motives, which led the architects of Neues Bauen consciously to adopt metaphors of hygiene to further their own personal design objectives.