PHAIS Seminar Series Week 3: Professor Penny Sparke (Art History)

The PHAIS Seminar Series meets weekly in term time to discuss a paper by a visiting Philosopher, Historian, Art Historian or a member of our academic staff.

Comfort and Calm: The Design of British Curative Environments, 1840-1914 – hydropathic establishments, convalescent homes, and asylums

The lecture will focus on one aspect of the above, namely what I am calling the 'in-between spaces' of the buildings in question - winter gardens, verandas and balconies etc. They performed part of the therapeutic process undertaken at these establishments, combining the comfort and protection provided by their inside spaces with the calm that came from an interaction with the outside.

Biography

Penny Sparke is Professor of Design History and the Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre at Kingston University. She studied French Literature at the University of Sussex from 1967-1971. She developed courses in, and taught, the History of Design to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Brighton Polytechnic (1975-1982) and the Royal College of Art (1982-1999). From 1999 to 2005 she was Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design & Music at Kingston University and from 2005 to 2014 she was Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise). She has also participated in conferences, given keynote addresses, been a member of journal editorial boards, curated exhibitions, delivered visiting lectures, broadcast and published in the field of Design History. Her most important publications include An Introduction to Design and Culture, 1900 to the present (1986, 2004, 2013, 2020, 2025); Italian Design from 1860 to the present (1989); As Long as It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995, 2010); Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration (2005); The Modern Interior (2008); and Nature Inside: Plants and Flowers in the Modern Interior (2021). 

The speaker will deliver this seminar on Zoom - please email phaispg@essex.ac.uk for the link.