Room with windows
(1888 - 2020)
Installation with lightbox, textile wallpaper, framed photograph
Various dimensions
 

Room with Windows is a series of works that deal with the principles of ventilation, hygiene and the growing influence of the government on the designing of public buildings in the 19th-century.

The spread of epidemic diseases in the inner cities of the 19th-century required a new design of public buildings, including school architecture. There were administrative guidelines for the number of square meters of space per child.

For that reason, the windows were designed to be high and rectangular in order to provide as much light as possible (to kill bacteria) and the top windows were kept open to provide constant circulation of fresh air. Students in schools were evacuated every three hours during a school day, so that the building could completely restore itself with fresh air.

Currently, Room with Windows is the starting point of a new research project into the relationship between epidemical diseases and architecture granted by Centraal Museum, University of Utrecht and ZonMW.






































































































Room with windows (1888-2020) is part of the solo-exhibition
This Creaking Floor and All the Ceilings Below,

FOTODOK & Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons,
Lange Nieuwstraat 7, Utrecht (NL)
06.03.20 - 14.06.20