Architectures and Landscapes of Health: A Comparative Study of 19th-Century Spa Towns as Regional Innovation Clusters
Research project by Dr. Oliver Sukrow (Habilitation)
My research project centers on the role of spa towns in the 19th century as regional innovation systems. Generally speaking, spa towns were centers of economic, social, cultural, and scientific transformations.
I am especially interested how spa towns in remote and mountainous regions developed architectonically during the 19th century and how they embodied new ideas and concepts of architecture, landscape, and health. By comparing Austrian Alpine spa towns like Bad Ischl and Bad Gastein with spaces and landscapes of wellbeing, e.g., in California, I’m trying to explain not only the entanglements of ideas of health between Central Europe and the US, but also what contribution architectural planning, urban and landscape design as well as visual representations of those spa towns had on the development of “healing architectures” in the avant-garde movement of the early 20th century. While the concept of “light, air, and sun” is traditionally attached with Modernism, I argue that 19th-century spa town architecture and landscape design had an important role not only on the discourse of the hygienic city but were also typological and design role models for the avant-garde.
My aim is also to create awareness of the importance of concepts of spa town architecture and landscape for current challenges that we are facing, not only in terms of ecology and sustainability but also with regards to the question of how to design healthy environments for living and leisure.
