Celebrated bodies

Recent Australian houses by Sean Godsell, Peter Stutchbury and Gabriel Poole (among others)reflect a campaign by modernist architects against Victorian mores concerning privacy. The paper identifies the nudist movement as a possible source of this campaign. Despite strong affinities between the Modernists' design rhetoric and the rhetoric of the early nudist movement, there is a surprising abscence of scholarship into the relationship of nudism and architecture. The crystallization of Modernist principles in architecture during the inter-war period coincided with a global proliferation of 'sun-worshiper' colonies throughout the industrialised world. Early nudist texts advocated the benefits to health and psychological well-being of sunlight, fresh air, nature and the removal of superfluous affects. Modernist buildings and texts can be seen as the architectural expression of those ideals. The paper analyses statements and works by Le Corbusier (who made public his own practice of nudism), in the light of the historical origins of the nudist movement. Le Corbusier challenged assumptions regarding the privacy of ablutions spaces, thus celebrating the naked bodies of buildings' occupants. Furthermore, by maximising their access to sunlight and fresh air, Le Corbusier provided occupants (who, according to this interpretation, should remain undressed), the rejuvenating benefits of a nudist colony. the moral imperative to lay bare a building's structure and program can be better understood when it is recognised that Le Corbusier's analogies point to bodies whose authority is connected to their nudity.