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Article: Mobile foundations: a reading of complex surfaces in Gottfried Semper's Treichler laundry ship.(Essay)
- Article from:
- Aurora, The Journal of the History of Art
- Article date:
- January 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 WAPACC Organization. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"Only through the different ways of wearing clothes does the building art begin." (1)
The focus of this paper is a strange artifact. Between 1861 and 1864 the architect Gottfried Semper (1803-1879) designed the Treichler laundry ship, an excessively ornamented mid-nineteenth century laundry barge named after its owner, the Swiss entrepreneur Heinrich Treichler. The ship began operations as a public laundromat on the Limmat river in the center of Zurich, Switzerland, near the Hotel Bellevue in the fall of 1864 (Fig.1). Over the years the ship has made cameo appearances as an illustration for several articles and books on Semper's work. (2) However, aside from a ...