The 'Genius of Place': Mitigating Stench in the New Palace of Westminster before the Great Stink

Abstract

London's Great Stink of 1858 has been seen as the event that forced MPs to instigate large-scale sanitation improvements, which remain the basis of the city's sewer system to the present day. This paper re-examines the Great Stink by investigating attempts to mitigate stench before 1858 through architectural intervention. Parliamentary ventilation systems were initially designed to withstand surrounding miasma through the application of metabolic concepts of organization, the building being conceived as a body that was in danger of becoming poisoned by its environment. Yet construction was beset by difficulties that led to the disintegration of system ideals and the adoption of a new ventila..