Architecture in the Age of Pandemics: from Tuberculosis to Covid-19

Discussion with Beatriz Colomina moderated by Moisés Puente.

Architecture and medicine have always been closely associated. Theories about the body and the brain are prevalent in architectural discourse, turning architects into doctors and clients into patients. Each era has its own distinctive afflictions, each of which requires its own architecture. The years of bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis therefore led to modern architecture, white buildings detached from the “wet ground where illness incubates”, in the words of Le Corbusier. The discovery of streptomycin brought this period to an end. During the post-war years, attention shifted to psychological issues. Architects ceased to be seen as doctors to be viewed as psychiatrists as well, and houses not only represented medical devices for preventing illness, but also provided psychological comfort and “nervous health”. The 21st century has ushered in an era of neurological disorders, including depression, ADHD, borderline personality disorders, occupational burnout syndrome and allergies (affecting those who are “environmentally hypersensitive” and unable to live in today’s world). But pandemics are back with COVID-19, a virus completely reshaping architecture and urban planning, with the disease once again revealing structural inequalities of race, class and gender.