As the weather brightens and spring starts to turn into summer, a bespoke conservatory is often the most beautiful way to enjoy the sun and your garden, serving as a way to keep in the shade during the day and a place to entertain at night.However, there is one common concern amongst homeowners and that is the “south-facing problem”; because of the way the sun rises and sets during the day, gardens that face south get the most sun for most of the day, allowing you to enjoy the weather for longer.
Whilst someone in a north-facing garden will still get a lot of the benefits of a conservatory, the peak hours for optimal enjoyment will be fewer than a south-facing garden, and it may need design or layout adjustments to enjoy the most.
However, one rather unusual inventor came up with an exceptionally unusual solution which would allow someone to enjoy the sun throughout the day.
The Solarium
Jean Saidman is a rather unusual conservatory innovator, being a early radiologist who became a relatively early proponent of heliotherapy, or using the light of the sun to not only put a smile on people’s faces but potentially to treat illnesses.
Born in 1897 in Falticeni, North Romania, he studied medicine whilst part of the French Foreign Legion, being part of a very early, pioneering group of early radiologists alongside his studies on tuberculosis.
His speciality quickly became heliotherapy, studying the effects of sunlight and ultraviolet light as a means to treat patients, believing strongly that it could potentially be used to treat tuberculosis.
To that end the uncompromising Dr Saidmen developed with the help of architect Andre Farde a most unusual conservatory known as The Solarium. Based in the alpine location of Aix-les-Bains, the Solarium was a revolving conservatory built on top of a more conventional clinic.
The eye-catching building was designed to always rotate to ensure that a patient was exposed to the maximum amount of sunlight possible during the day, and it was not long before a second Solarium was constructed at the Cote d’Azur.
There were multiple rooms on the revolving platform, each with a bed that could be tilted to keep a patient directly exposed to the rays of the sun, with different protocols to treat skin conditions, rheumatism, tuberculosis and rickets.
This got the attention of Ranjitsinhji, the ruler of Nawanager (now part of the state of Gujurat in India) and a former cricket player who on a visit to France was immediately drawn to the unique rotating conservatories.
Upon being told what they were for in the early 1930s, he was reported to have said that India has “no shortage of sunlight” and therefore Dr Saidman should construct a similar Solarium in Jamnagar, the Indian state’s capital.
It would be ultimately completed after Ranjitsinhji’s death and would be known as the Ranjit Institute of Poly-Radio Therapy in his honour, and the Solarium conservatory is perceived in the region to be a symbol of the maharaja’s push towards a more modern and progressive country.
Dr Saidman spent many years in India during and immediately after its construction, and by the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Jamnager solarium was the only surviving revolving conservatory in the world. The other two were victims of the German invasion of France, becoming makeshift hospitals.
After the Second World War ended, Dr Saidman aimed to continue his work, inspired by utopian ideals and the traditional Indian medicine tradition of Ayurveda, but very quickly his ideas would be made obsolete.
In 1946, the antibiotic streptomycin was developed that became the front-line treatment for tuberculosis, turning the disease from a near-death sentence to a very treatable, curable medical condition.
Whilst this did not make light therapy entirely redundant, and indeed varying forms of light treatment are used today, it did make Dr Saidman’s focus on light therapy to treat tuberculosis largely obsolete and the Solarium concept started to wind down.
The only surviving revolving conservatory in Jamnager still stands to this day, but after a cyclone severely damaged its medical equipment and lenses, it largely stands, relatively derelict, as a tourist attraction and symbol of a path not taken in both medicine and home design.
Due to the huge cost of construction, the complexities of a revolving platform and the nightmare of getting planning permission for such a structure, it is unlikely that revolving conservatories will ever be seen again, but it stands as a fascinating example of a path not quite taken.