This 2004 book examines one of the key notions of modernist architecture as it was formulated in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century. Providing a close analysis of four major buildings - Olbrich's Secession Building, Hoffmann's Purkersdorf Sanatorium, Wagner's Postal Savings Bank, and Loos's Michaelerplatz building - Leslie Topp investigates how 'truth' could be interpreted in a variety of ways, including truth to purpose, symbolist or ideal truth, and ethical notions of authenticity. Drawing on newly uncovered archival materials, Topp offers an interpretation of familiar buildings that are shown to encompass utopianism, hyper-rationality, and subjectivism. She also explores the connections between Viennese modern architecture and contemporary painting, psychiatry, fashion, labor issues, and anti-Semitic politics.
Spurred by ideals of individual liberty that took hold in the Western world in the late nineteenth century, psychiatrists and public officials sought to reinvent asylums as large-scale, totally design
This is the first volume of papers devoted to an examination of the relationship between mental health/illness and the construction and experience of space. This historical analysis with contributions
Papers in this book were selected from a conference held at Oxford Brookes University in 2002, and focus on space, architecture, psychiatry, and madness. Sectional topics include madhouses, asylums, a
