Category: research
-
Chairs for Health
After interviewing medical staff and patients, Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino, also an architect, meticulously co-designed the interior of the Paimio sanatorium in southwest Finland, from door handles that would not catch the sleeve of a doctor’s coat, to sinks that muffled splashing sounds, to the tables, clocks, lighting fixtures, desks, stools, and chairs.…
-
Youth Heliotherapy
Leah Lovell and Pauline Schindler ran a progressive school together in the 1920s. This image shows them in a sundrenched garden in Los Angeles, holding hands in a circle with several children (including two sons of the photographer Edward Weston). Most of the children are barefoot and naked but for underwear. Not surprisingly for the…
-
Physical Culture magazine
Bernarr Macfadden was a vegetarian bodybuilder and publisher whose widely popular magazine, Physical Culture, (founded in 1899) promoted exercise, fasting, temperance, unprocessed foods, and virility. Macfadden’s origins were intoxicating, especially to a young person seeking to remake themselves. Orphaned by an alcoholic father and consumptive mother in Missouri, the sickly Macfadden was told by doctors that…
Lyra Kilston 