L’architecture de l’ancien bâtiment thermal d’Aix-les-Bains : un témoignage de l’histoire des thérapeutiques physiques et manuelles
The old spa building at Aix-les-Bains (Savoie) is composed of a series of constructions progressively added to the original monument, built in 1786 close to springs that were known to the Romans. The most recent significant additions date from the 1970s. At this period, over 50,000 people per year c...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | fra |
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Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
2017-02-01
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| Series: | In Situ |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/insitu/14532 |
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| Summary: | The old spa building at Aix-les-Bains (Savoie) is composed of a series of constructions progressively added to the original monument, built in 1786 close to springs that were known to the Romans. The most recent significant additions date from the 1970s. At this period, over 50,000 people per year came to Aix-les-Bains to take the waters. The analysis of local medical publications dating from the last century and a half, along with the examination of successive plans of the establishment, has drawn attention to the close imbrication between architecture and medicine. The first building date from a period still inspired by Hippocratic medicine for which sweating is one of the basic principles of health. The buildings of the second half of the nineteenth century give more emphasis to physical and manual therapies (massages, showers) which accompany the development of physical medicine. During the twentieth century, mobility and re-education techniques in a bathing pool determine new architectural designs which come to meet the needs of rheumatology and orthopedic surgery. The architectural evolution of the establishment reflects the history of medical specialities and their Hippocratic basis. The architectural eclecticism which characterises the spa buildings also makes them precious from the perspective of intangible heritage: the rites and rituals of taking the waters at Aix-les-Bains |
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| ISSN: | 1630-7305 |