The Open Rooms

At the beginning of the 20th century, tuberculosis sanatoriums were designed as climate machines. Patients sometimes slept in open galleries, even in winter, wrapped in blankets facing cold air. Before antibiotics, architecture itself became therapy: light, ventilation, rest, and solar exposure were organized as a medical protocol.

Before the arrival of streptomycin and effective antibiotics, tuberculosis remains one of Europe's great diseases. Sanatoriums then develop as specialized institutions where architectural space is directly conceived as treatment.

The principle rests on a combination of strict rest, controlled diet, pure air, and sunlight. Buildings are often constructed at altitude, oriented toward the south, and equipped with long terraces or cure galleries. Patients spend several hours daily lying outdoors, sometimes in mid-winter. This cold exposure may seem brutal, but it fits into a medical theory valuing permanent ventilation and distance from confined urban atmospheres.

Modernist architecture will retain many of these devices: white facades, large windows, balconies, roof terraces, and easily cleaned surfaces. Several forms later associated with modern comfort partly derive from sanitary concerns. The sanatorium thus transforms the room into a therapeutic instrument. Bed position, window orientation, and air circulation become medical elements.

After antibiotics, many of these establishments lose their primary function. But their influence persists in the history of hospital and domestic architecture. The luminous, airy, and white house of the 20th century owes much to this culture of healing through environment.