Facing reality
Questioning the success of the Queen Alexandra Sanatorium as a medical machine
M. Drgas (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
E.P.N. Schreurs – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
The Queen Alexandra Sanatorium in Davos was initially conceptualised as a medical apparatus: a precisely designed building to facilitate the recovery of tuberculosis patients through controlled exposure to the natural environment. Its original design from 1909 was developed following rigorous typological and hygienic principles. The design prioritised individual patient rooms, each with a private balcony, a south-facing orientation, and a facade that acted as a therapeutic filter rather than a barrier. Each element was meticulously crafted to facilitate one’s
recovery.
However, as time passed, the clarity of purpose gradually eroded. Successive adaptations, including extensions, interior compromises, and shifts in usage, have challenged the building’s original logic. The sanatorium thus became a site of negotiations between ideology and evolving need, thereby exposing the limitations of the machine metaphor in architecture.
The thesis unfolds in three chapters. The first explores the sanatorium as a typological and technological prototype of healing architecture, tracing its alignment with early modernist ideals. The second focuses on the facade, analysing how it acted as both a mediator and a mechanism for healing and how later modifications diluted its therapeutic role. The third focuses on the interior atmosphere, revealing the tensions between medical rationalism and the desire for domestic comfort. All of this represents an unresolved duality within the building’s lived experience.
Through examination of original plans, photographic documentation, and literature analysis, this thesis challenges the conventional perception of Queen Alexandra as a static symbol of the modernist idea of a machine while considering it as an evolving structure shaped by use, adaptation, and human presence. In doing so, it calls into question the viability of purely functional architecture and highlights the need to consider buildings as mutable, responsive environments. The Queen Alexandra Sanatorium is both a modernist landmark and a reminder of the fragility of architectural ideals when faced with reality.