When you look at photos of the bathroom in Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, you have to also think about life in France at the time it was designed and built. According to Steven Zdatny, writing about The French Hygiene Offensive of the 1950s, personal cleanliness was not exactly a priority at the time. In fact, it was frowned upon.

Alongside the sheer impracticality of keeping clean and the folk wisdom emphasizing the prophylactic power of dirt, the shame attached to naked bodies deterred their comprehensive washing. “I am over sixty-eight and never have I washed there!” protested one woman who found herself in hospital and threatened with a bath. Educational manuals warned that warm baths would encourage pupils to “think evil thoughts”.

Even when Pasteur and Koch figured out that germs caused disease, the French resisted cleaning up. As late as 1946, only 11 percent of French apartments had a bathroom and less than one percent had a shower.

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