The bathroom as we know it today was born at the beginning of the 19th century: when Otto Wagner, on the occasion of a jubilee, presented a transparent tub

The history of the bathroom as a room is linked to two parallel tracks.

On the one hand, hygiene and pleasure, the latter also understood as a religious theme, constitute a track, and on the other the dichotomy between the public sphere and the private sphere.

Each area has followed its own path, especially during the different historical periods in which one had greater relevance than the other.

This continuous mixing of spheres of relevance has brought us to the modern era, in which the bathroom takes on a complete form, incorporating both the space intended for hygiene and that dedicated to body care.

The history of the bathroom: Pleasure, practices and purification rites

Throughout its history, the bathroom has lost some of the values ​​that were more evident in the past, such as the pleasure aspect, immersive purification practices and rites, or the public aspect, as in ancient Greece or during the Roman Empire, in which hygiene practices did not necessarily require a significant degree of privacy.

In the nineteenth century, the bathroom took on its current form

What is surprising about the design of these spaces is that the bathroom environment, despite being a millenary theme, took on its current form only at the end of the nineteenth century, when the system solutions had finally resolved all the problems related to the design.

The history of the contemporary bathroom begins with the Jubilee Exhibition in 1898

The story I am about to tell begins towards the end of the nineteenth century, precisely in 1898, when during the Jubilee Exhibition, Otto Wagner decided to present a model residence. A bedroom with bathroom was represented, a reproduction of his rented apartment at Köstlergasse 3 in Vienna.

Otto Wagner's Scandalous Transparent Bathtub

His aim was to present the public with a new idea of ​​the bathroom with a revolutionary and “scandalous” transparent crystal bathtub.

The most innovative space was the bathroom, a rectangular space measuring 5.28 meters long, 2.91 meters wide and 3.60 meters high.

In the installation, the cold and rigid majolica floor, of nineteenth-century tradition, was covered with a white and violet fabric, made with a cotton sponge weave, finely decorated with simple horizontal lines.

The fabric was the same used for towels and bathrobes and was also used to cover the walls, with a single interruption in the corners where a white painted wooden frame was inserted.

The taps and all the accessories were made of brass with a nickel finish, following the traditional production of the time. But the element of great novelty was the tub, made entirely of glass, with nickel-plated metal joints on the four corners.

A seductive tub

On its ambiguity and the seductive power of that tub, August Sarnitz wrote: "One could not fail to collect the evident ambivalence between the aesthetics of transparency, the ethics of purity and the eroticism of nudity".

Hygiene takes over

The history of the bathroom changed in the twentieth century when the intention to satisfy hygiene needs inside one's home had determined a quick reflection on the arrangement of domestic environments, attributing the bathroom a central role in this mutation.

Adapting to spaces: mimetic furnishings

The first solutions had to adapt to pre-existing spaces, thus giving rise to the first mimetic furnishings.

Initially positioned near the kitchen, to meet water needs, they were later moved near the bedroom.

At the same time, water heating systems also underwent specialization, with the widespread diffusion of containers that used urban gas to heat water.

Running Water Comes to the Bathroom

With the introduction of running water in homes, these pieces of furniture could be connected to both the water supply and the sewer system.

The supplies were often integrated with the surrounding furniture, resulting in the usual vision of sinks in cabinets made of materials such as ash and cherry. These pieces of furniture had legs and a frame in bronzed iron, completed with a border in black walnut, cherry or ash.

Bathroom and Modernist Architecture

The bathroom designed by Otto Wagner demonstrated his innovative ideas about functionality and hygiene in the design of living spaces. At the time, these concepts were crucial elements of modernist architecture, which aimed to adapt residential environments to the growing needs of society, embracing new standards of hygiene and comfort.

Wagner emerged, within the history of the bathroom, as the forerunner in connecting the concept of “hygiene” not only to functional purposes, but also to the aesthetic aspects of architecture.

His perspective, integrated into the theory of architectural modernization, transformed hygiene from an essential element for proper functioning to a fundamental prerequisite for a complete revolution in the field of architecture.

Adolf Loos: without plumbers there is no modernity

The result of this exhibition according to Adolf Loos, as he wrote on June 12, 1898 in the article The Interiors in the Rotunda, was a “jewel” of modernity, a change of pace in the history of the bathroom.

A few months later Loos wrote another article entitled The Plumbers where he argued that without the plumber there would be no modernity.

Loos seemed to indicate a shift of architectural attention to what escapes direct perception, to what is imperceptible.

The plumbing system, far from being exclusively an invisible infrastructure or the mechanical part of buildings, instead becomes a functional aesthetic component.

The plumbing system reveals itself as an element of spatial organization. In this way, it becomes a key element in architectural design and in the history of the bathroom as we know it today.

On the cover: On the occasion of the 1898 Jubilee of Vienna, the Austrian architect Otto Wagner exhibits a bathroom that has as its model that of his residence. But with the innovation of a transparent glass bathtub and a single type of white and violet striped fabric on the wall, on the floor, for towels and bathrobes. Ph Courtesy Österreichische nationalbibliothek.

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