Interior Hygiene: Body, Space, Society, Ideals in the Modernist Turkish Context

Body, Space, Society, Ideals in the Modernist Turkish Context

Abstract

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.