Unpacking the latent bodies of interwar ultraviolet health glass.

摘要

In the late-1920s, a new architectural glass appeared which promised health benefits, by the enhanced transmission of the beneficial ultraviolet spectrum of sunlight. Vitaglass promised to turn buildings into therapeutic devices at a time when Euro-American societies were preoccupied with disease. Through its evocative visualizing of the invisible properties of ultraviolet light, Vitaglass captured the imagination if not the market, and opened the door not only for competitors, but for today's tailoring of architectural glass to particular performance characteristics. In asking the question, "what were the latent bodies in ultraviolet health glass?" this dissertation relates the story of Vitaglass and its claims and interests, and how these were both communicated, and embodied in the built environment. These bodies are not physically present, but latent within the material, its communication, and the buildings in which it is found. In unpacking these bodies, this dissertation first considers them as enmeshed within a context of the sciences of light and medicine, the technologies of glass and the practices of health. The bodies are revealed through an examination of business records, reports and memos, advertising imagery and print, and client testimonials alongside built and imagined architectural projects in the United States and Britain. Needy bodies were constructed of and conveyed through the rational and persuasive words and images of a propaganda campaign. But, these could also be found within the concerns of and positions taken by a number of interwar agencies, and in the words, buildings and projects of interwar architects, who saw their work as remedial for both social and physical ills, and in that sense not unlike an array of consumer goods, which each offered the dream of a body without needs. Magical bodies were resident both in the imagery and word-magic of its body of advertising, and in the glass substance itself, which became capable of the invisible transduction of sunlight into a disease-free, healthy, and better life. Underpinning both the transductive power of the glass and the psychological control posed by the words and symbols used in its advertising, were the normal bodies propounded by the emerging techniques and fields of graphical measurement, statistics, and scientific management. This interdisciplinary study offers a way of reconsidering the ways in which buildings are shaped by the design of their materials and the concerns and capacities embodied in those designs. It furthermore offers a way of understanding the ways in which those designs, through the built environment, can impact both building performance and human practice.