The Five Purpose Bath

AD & C March 1935
The 1930s was a golden era of apartment building. Fitted kitchens and bathrooms started to become normal, alongside the hi-tech luxuries of central heating and electric sockets.
In March 1935, Architectural Design and Construction (AD’s forerunner) published a reference section on “Bathrooms fit to sing in”. The author mocks the new-fangled kitchen appliances and asks “where ... is the automatic body washer?” One hears the clipped accent of the nascent BBC’s Queen’s English echo from the page: “It would be quite simple – just a matter of rotating brushes, scurrying flannels, and self-lathering soap” instilling a vision of a body-washing machine akin to a carwash sitting in the corner of the bathroom.
The market became flooded with manufacturers offering sanitary ware of multiple uncoordinated sizes. The International Bath Association (I.B.A.) was set up and called for standardisation to address these pressing problems. It worked: “even such tremendous trifles as tap heads and shields have not been overlooked, for to-day, instead of a minutely printed ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ on a tap head troubling the shortsighted bather, coloured Bakelite quickly identifies the taps.”
Where a fitted bathroom wasn’t possible, space-saving gadgets were invented, culminating in Heath Robinson’s 1936 book “How to live in a flat”. One such gadget actually marketed by the I.B.A. in this issue of AD&C was the “five purpose bath”, which could be used “as a sitting bath for an adult or child, a wash basin for hand use or light laundry articles, a kitchen sink with draining board, a home laundry fully equipped with rubbing board and wringer, and a strong table for meals or kitchen use, ironing, pastry-making, etc.”
Since then, of course, mechanisation has taken control, our time has become more valuable than our space and we’re all spoiled by independent baths, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers and dining tables. All we need now is that automatic body washer...

AD & C March 1935 p.166
AD & C March 1935 p.167














Comments

  1. ANKIT DALAL8 February 2021 at 05:11

    This is a very informative page. I am Tamilrockers

    ReplyDelete
  2. ANKIT DALAL21 March 2021 at 08:57

    I guys there is a new website here I have checked it out you guys can also check this Tamilrockers hgd

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Marshall McLuhan’s Playboy Interview

Image
Playboy March 1969 March, 1969. As the US was about to be distracted from the disaster that was Vietnam by landing on the moon, Playboy magazine published a lengthy interview with Canadian father of media studies and patron saint of Wired magazine, Marshall McLuhan. In nearly 14 pages of solid text, McLuhan talks about how society is only able to be consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it and how new media simultaneously extend the senses and numb them: “Narcissus narcosis, a syndrome whereby man remains as unaware of the psychic and social effects of his new  technology as a fish of the water it swims in.” He goes on to explain how “the visual function was overdeveloped” and how visual space replaced acoustic space of tribal man. He then gets a little hallucinogenic, predicting the return of tribal man living in “cosmic harmony”. There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. In another article in the same magazine, Arthur C. Clarke predicts that the solar sy
Read more

Ted Cullinan

It’s hard to find somebody today who doesn’t have a good word to say about the latest RIBA Gold Medal winner, Ted Cullinan. So I thought I’d see how he appeared in the journals – the cutting edge of architectural historiography. His first new build was his Uncle Horder’s house (1958-1960) and actually published in House & Garden in May 1963. There were small appearances in the ‘70s, particularly with the Highgrove housing, but he really started attracting media attention around 1983 – half way between starting out and receiving his Gold medal. In September 1983, the Architectural Review focused on “Romantic Pragmatism” – architects who “have a pragmatic approach to building organisation and construction, and a romantic sensibility”. Cullinan and MacCormac were put forward as the main protagonists, the former being called “the father of a generation of Romantic Pragmatists” in Brendan Woods’s article and both being called “The English Wet Brigade” by Peter Cook. However, Cullina
Read more