Docomomo International is proud to present the second issue of the Docomomo Journal co-edited with the International Specialist Committee on Interior Design (ISC/ID), represented by guest editors Zsuzsanna Böröcz and Deniz Hasirci. Established at the Council Meeting during the 16th International Docomomo Conference in Lisbon in 2016, the ISC/ID has since grown and evolved, as evidenced by significant activities, including seminars, discussions, and publications. Already before the establishment of the ISC/ID, interior design and modern living have been explicit themes in two Docomomo Journal issues: no. 46 Designing for Modern Life and no. 47 Global Design, both published in 2012, extended beyond the architectural scale to encompass the qualities of interior space and the constituent elements and materialities of daily life.

The focus of this paper is the significance of the modern bathroom in Turkey, its meaning in the modernization of interiors, in terms of hygiene as a precaution for crises, as well as sanitary ware, and Turkish company VitrA’s role in continuously emphasizing the modern bathroom and challenging behavioral habits through design competitions, from the 1940s onwards.Among one of the most important spaces of hygiene, the bathroom was instrumental in bringing Western habits into the modern Turkish house. Hygiene was a matter of modern national identity emphasized in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the century, even before the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923.The Western ideals of comfort and hygiene, bodily practices, and lavatory fixtures all contributed to the understanding of the modernization process of Turkish interiors. Moreover, a bathroom that combined the Western and today’s internationally accepted alla franga lavatory, a sink and a bath, thus combining these activities became a household application and a reflection of modern life. In the 1950s and 1960s, as the average urban Turkish family life moved to apartments that often housed governmental civil servants, the modern bathroom became a standard household space. Meanwhile, the alla turca lavatory, a lavatory on which one has to crouch, and that is still used in certain parts of Turkey and Asia, represented the uncivilized and unhygienic.With the modernization of the domestic interior, a transformation of wet allocation spaces took place, leading to the questioning of the domestic and public. Moreover, new materials and bathroom equipment were introduced, and bathroom equipment competitions were established, leading to inventions that synthesized habits of the East and the West, reaching a new hygienic standard regarding relevant potential crises. Both the company history of VitrA Eczacıbaşı and the competing designs are showcased in the paper, aiming to support an understanding of social and spatial change in the modern Turkish domestic interior that has redefined identity with proactive lessons for the future.

While the modernist discourses of the 20th century pretended to solve all the problems of daily life through the acts of standardization, unification, and scientific progress, the modernist practice incorporates its advancements and conflicts within the same built environment. One such discourse is on domestic health and hygiene, which proposes to integrate various functions of bathing, cleaning, washing, and defecation within the so-called volume ‘wet space’, equipped with modern utilities. It is questionable how healthy and hygienic such a spatial model is compared to traditional domestic life, in which most of these functions have been segregated and/or performed according to cultural norms. This neglected problem has become evident with long-term lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in apartment blocks where all inhabitants have to share a single wet space throughout the day. This paper questions whether the modernist discourses of health and hygiene function properly in modern domestic architecture and how the conflicts of wet space can be read. Accordingly, we concentrate on selected apartments in Turkey that were built between 1950 and 1970 and are still in use today: Ataköy Housing Estate, Phase I-II, and Yeşiltepe Blocks, developed and built by the Emlak Kredi Bank. Through scholars’ and architects’ discourses and practices on domestic hygiene derived from articles and architectural drawings in national archives, the paper provides a comparative analysis of wet spaces in these apartments in terms of their location within the spatial layout, the utilities and materials applied, as well as their privacy level. The analysis shows that the limitations of the wet space in these modern apartment interiors reveal the possible risks to domestic health and hygiene, particularly in times of pandemic.

Petite Maison dans les Environs de Castellar: this is how Eileen Gray (1878-1976), a designer active in early 20th-century France, entitled in her cahiers the architecture she built between 1931 and 1935. The villa, later named Tempe à Pailla, is an opportunity to deepen her research on that intense dialog between interior and exterior, between domestic space and natural environment, already experimented with Jean Badovici (1893-1956) in the villa E1027 (1926-1929) in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.According to Eileen Gray’s definition, a house is not a machine à habiter but ‘the shell of man, his extension, his release, his spiritual emanation.’ The theme of spatial flexibility is approached through the design of mechanical moving components that rotate or slide, unfold, and contract, thanks to the possibilities of new materials, in a mechanical ballet that expands the narrow dimension of a maison minimum into a dwelling with a greater width. These solutions are intended to negate the facade as a frontier line between the architectural space and the close surroundings; any hierarchical relationship between furniture, interiors, architecture, and site is denied. The kinaesthetic aspect in Tempe à Pailla is absolute, since the house lives of the relationship between the movement of architectural components and the experiential dimension of the human body in domestic space, all in relation to the surrounding natural environment. This article aims to demonstrate how Eileen Gray’s innovative theoretical framework, exemplified by villa Tempe à Pailla, offers valuable lessons for addressing contemporary challenges. In this context, it highlights the design solutions adopted by the architect to ensure the well-being of inhabitants, even within minimal spaces, emphasizing the importance of transitional spaces between built and natural environments, thereby expanding the notion of the interior. At the same time, it becomes an opportunity to explore how a renewed relationship with nature can offer meaningful insights for contemporary architectural practices, which now more than ever require particular attention to environmental issues.

In June, Berthold Burkhardt, one of the supporters of the first hours of Docomomo, passed away. He was involved in the organization of the International Docomomo Conference at Bauhaus Dessau (1992), and actively participating in the “restart” of Docomomo Germany in 2006.He studied architecture and civil engineering in Stuttgart (1960-1965). As an architect and engineer in Frei Otto’s office, he was involved in iconic buildings such as the German Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal and the roof structures for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. As a staff member of Institute for Lightweight Structures at the University (ILEK) in Stuttgart and in research projects, he devoted himself scientifically to the topic that occupied him throughout his entire professional life: lightweight structures.In 1984 he was appointed as professor and Head of the Institute for Structural Design at TU Braunschweig. He was able to combine his research with architectural teaching and his work as an independent architect, from 1993 together with Martin Schumacher in the Burkhardt + Schumacher office. Conservation and renovation projects became increasingly important, e.g. the employment agengy in Dessau by Walter Gropius and the Chancellor’s Bungalow in Bonn by Sep Ruf.Next to his active involvement in Docomomo, he was a member of ICOMOS, Europa Nostra, the Alvar Aalto Society, the Koldewey Society for Historical Building Research and the Society for the History of Building Technology, and served several years as head of the monitoring group for the German World Heritage Sites. As an expert and advisor, he supported the Wüstenrot Foundation and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, and played a key role in setting the course for the general refurbishment of the Bauhaus building from 1996 onwards.We will miss him as an architect, engineer, scientist, mentor and friend.

The effects of climate change, resource depletion, and volatile economic circumstances require a reflection on current design approaches that can be gained through lessons from the original and mediated intentions of the Modern Movement. An important example can be found in South Africa before WW II, where the introduction of standardized building materials, particularly metal-framed windows, generated unique, mediated Modern Movement-inspired domestic interiors resulting from responses to a burgeoning industry, physical context, and functionalist attitudes to human activities.The clarion call of the Modern Movement for an architecture of economy, efficiency, and health underlined Le Corbusier’s “Cinq Points de l’Architecture Moderne” (Curtis, 1996, p. 175). This dictum was transmigrated to South Africa through the work of the zerohour Group formed in 1932. Unfortunately, the starkness of the ‘foreign’ architecture did not resonate with the general public, while interiors overheated and flat roofs leaked in the summer. In 1936, Iscor, a South African company, began assembling standardized metal window frames. Architects like Norman Eaton, Hellmut Stauch, and Robert Cole Bowen, sensitive to local contexts, utilized these metal window frames to create unique architectural interiors. The windows and associated modules not only provided an economical construction and structural logic through planning efficiency but generated more contextually and climatically related interiors, healthier internal environments, and fluid internal-external relationships.This article delves into the origins and impacts of the Modern Movement in Johannesburg and Pretoria, focusing on the transformative influence of the standard metal window. Then, the bioclimatic, technological, and spatial effects of these windows on residential interiors and their lasting legacy will be highlighted.

Traveling during an epidemic can be challenging both for people and for the design of suitable infrastructures. In the late 19th century, as knowledge about infectious diseases spread, hygienic conditions and inspections became mandatory, especially in places of passenger traffic. This led to the need for specific adaptations in the existing infrastructure of such places. However, the port of Gdynia, which the Republic of Poland decided to build in 1922 on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea shortly after the country regained independence, was an entirely different case. During the 1920s and 1930s, Gdynia served as a significant travel hub for passengers traveling between Central Europe and America. This period also witnessed the rise of modern design methods in the development of the city and its port. The entire port infrastructure was built from the ground up, allowing for the implementation of the latest and most advanced solutions. The article presents research on a building complex in Gdynia called the Emigration Point. The study aims to analyze the design guidelines for the modern interior and the design itself to recreate the path a guest of the Emigration Point would take, from arrival to leaving the complex. The complex was designed to minimize the risk of infection and the development of potential diseases among emigrants. The research involved detailed historical analyses using primary source studies, such as project drawings and original documentation. This method was complemented with digital tools to reconstruct buildings or architectural spaces that have been significantly altered or no longer exist. The study also investigates the impact of the Modern Movement’s assumptions on the project’s conditions, including the complex layout, pavilion designs, functional and spatial principles, materials, the interior, and equipment. Additionally, it raises questions about the validity of the solutions proposed at the time, how they relate to current threats, and what we can learn from them.

After World War II, Finland and Poland needed swift housing reconstruction. In Finland, the solution was prefabricated, wooden detached houses, which soon were exported globally. In 1947-48, Poland imported around 4,000 Finnish houses to the mining areas in Silesia. The architecture was based on domestic Finnish models developed from modernist housing ideals. The division of the interiors focused on rational usage of space, labor, and hygiene. Today, most of the buildings are preserved, and it is possible to track the adaptations of the architecture from foreign temporary structures to local homes and heritage to provide data for developing future reconstruction architecture.This article analyzes how Finnish modernist ideals on home and housing were circulated internationally by exporting prefabricated wooden housing to reconstruction areas in Upper Silesia. The main questions relate to how the Finnish ideology on modernist housing and interior planning was adapted to the local culture of home and housing in Silesia and what can be learned from the reception and adaption of the interiors when designing housing for reconstruction after crises today. The article is based on archival material from Finland and Poland, such as architectural drawings, maps, and documentation on trade and export. The main methodologies are architectural and design analysis combined with historiographic reading of archival data and literature. The article shows how architecture with interiors planned for Finnish domestic use became integrated into the Silesian home culture, transforming temporary housing into permanent homes.

In February, Bernard Bauchet, a pioneer restoration architect of French Modern Movement buildings, passed away. In him we lose a knowledgeable and amiable person. He was involved, in one or another way, in all important projects of the rich French Moden Movement legacy.He restored la Maison de Verre by Chareau and Bijvoet, and published the book “la Maison de Verre” (GA publishers). He was responsible for the restoration and renovation of la Maison du Brésil by le Corbusier, Lucio Costa’s work in the Cité Universitaire in Paris, the Unité d’Habitation (first tranche) by le Corbusier in Brieu en Foret, and several other buildings by le Corbusier, Robert Mallet Stevens, Jean Lurçat and Auguste Peret.For the haute couture house of Azzedine Alaïa he did the transformation and renovation of the old warehouses by Victor Baltard in Paris 4th.I had the pleasure to cooperate with Bernard on the restoration of la Maison de Theo van Doesburg in Meudon, and together we participated in the scientific committee of the restoration and renovation of le Collège Néerlandais by Willem Dudok in the Cité Universitaire in Paris.Bernard was a member of other commitees as well, such as the Commission Nationale des Monuments Historiques (collège Mouvement Moderne), the expert committee of the Fondation le Corbusier, the scientific committee of la Maison E1027 by Eileen Gray in Roquebrune, and la Maison du Peuple by Beaudouin-Lods and Jean Prouvé in Clichy.He published various articles and participated in the international Docomomo conferences in New York and Ankara. Bernard’s curiosity and enthusiasm to learn and understand the motivation of the original architect he was dealing with, together with his knowledge of materials and implementation techniques made him extraordinary in the orbit of the Modern Movement.As the representative of la Maison Azzedine Alaïa wrote: “Bernard Bauchet était un architect exceptional, un homme d’un talent et d’une humaité rare.”