The Soane Museum Study Group is an open forum for scholars – both established and emerging – to present new research into an aspect of architectural history and/or Soane’s collection.

Olek Musial - Water Works: Sir John Soane & the Rise of Hygiene Architecture in the late 18th century

In surviving structures designed by the ‘master of light and space,’ Sir John Soane’s life-long investment in engineering water circulation systems remains hardly noticeable. In exploring this missing chapter of the architect’s oeuvre, the talk draws upon recently rediscovered archival and design evidence in order to shed a new light on his cutting-edge solutions that introduced bathing infrastructure into British domestic, residential, and public sites at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. By recognising Soane’s avid dialogue with both local and foreign points of reference, including examples derived from France, Eastern Europe, and India, one can reappraise the gradual development of plunge pools and vapour baths in his drawings, models, and memoranda in relation to the emergence of modern hygiene architecture. More than a marginal curiosity, Soane’s waterworks actively participated in the global exchange of architectural innovation that would set the ground for wide-scale sanitary reforms in the Victorian period.

About the speaker

Aleksander (Olek) Musiał is the 2024 Soane Foundation Scholar specialising in long-18th-century exchanges between British and Eastern European art and architecture. A graduate from Warsaw, Cambridge, and Princeton, he pursued research through fellowships and visiting positions at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, the British School at Rome, École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. Olek’s articles appeared in the PUAM Record, and the Oxford Art Journal, for which he was awarded the HGSCEA Emerging Scholar Publication Prize.

 

Event details

  • Wednesday 23 April 2025, 18:00 - 19:30
  • Drinks reception 18:00, talk begins at 18:30
  • On arrival, please come to No. 14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The door will be staffed from 18:00
  • Your email confirmation serves as your ticket