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With each of us now living in socially distanced self-isolation, with shops shuttered, offices abandoned and urban centres reduced to ghost towns, it’s hard not to wonder what kind of lasting impact Covid-19 will have on our cities. Will homes need to adapt to better accommodate work? Will pavements widen so we can keep our distance? Will we no longer want to live so densely packed together, working in open-plan offices and cramming into lifts? — The Guardian
Writing in The Guardian, Oliver Wainwright takes a long look at the ways, past and present, that architecture has been shaped by concerns over hygiene, sanitation, and disease. View full entry
Clean lines, white surfaces and indoor-outdoor living epitomise early modern architecture. Contrary to received wisdom, to Colomina this is less a machine aesthetic than a hospital aesthetic. Through the lens of disease, nervous disorders, sexuality and self-expression, Colomina’s fascinating interpretation of modern architecture suggests the motivating factors behind the architectural revolution were the need for health and cleanliness, hygiene and smooth, calming surfaces. — The Sydney Morning Herald
In light of her recently published book X-Ray Architecture, architectural historian Beatriz Colomina talks about the history of how illnesses shaped the clean aesthetics of 20th-century modern architecture. ‘‘In the 20th century architects from Le Corbusier to Mies van der Rohe to Alvar... View full entry
Photographer Benny Lam has documented the suffocating living conditions in Hong Kong’s subdivided flats, recording the lives of these hidden communities. — The Guardian
From a stove-adjacent toilet to walls crammed with knives, scissors, and precariously stacked storage cases, Benny Lam's photographs of illegally subdivided apartments in Hong Kong are like a gorgeously illustrated case study in how major disease epidemics get started. This Guardian article is a... View full entry
After being diagnosed with ALS, a disease of the nervous system that gradually takes away motor control, breathing, and speech, 38-year-old landscape architect Steve Saling decided to invent a home that he could control with eye movements. As CNN.com explains:With a grant of $500,000 from Berman... View full entry
Archive (“Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments”) proposes “bringing attention to the built environment and how it is a transmission vehicle for the spread and control of a respiratory illness like TB” [...]
Archive is starting small, with an as-yet-uninitiated project on respiratory health and indoor pollutants in Ethiopia and projects on TB awareness in London.
— nextcity.org
More on the intersection of architecture and public health:A story about death and architectureNew Parsons-led collaborative aims to make affordable housing healthierHow concrete floors can prevent child deaths in Bangladesh5 ways to build health into your architecture, as seen at GW’s new $... View full entry
Sometimes it's easy to pretend that architecture exists outside of this world, erupting instead in the blank of a 3D space governed only by the laissez-fair laws of software. But sometimes a news headline will penetrate through this fog of imagination, appearing as a blazing light shining forth... View full entry
Recently, a team of pathogen hunters at Columbia University...conducted a survey of the viruses and bacteria in Manhattan’s rats, the first attempt to use DNA to catalog pathogens in any animal species in New York City [...] Although the scientists examined just 133 rats, they found plenty of pathogens. Some caused food-borne illnesses. Others, like Seoul hantavirus, had never before been found in New York. Others were altogether new to science. — NY Times
New York's notorious rat problem is just one of the many complex human-animal interactions that can lead to disease outbreaks. Ebola, which has decimated West Africa and is now appearing in the US, likely spread to humans from contact with infected primates. Avian flu (H5N1) spreads from contact... View full entry
Design concepts for portable, rapidly deployable Ebola virus treatment clinics created by Texas A&M Master of Architecture students will be unveiled at a 2 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 24 presentation on the fourth floor of the Langford Architecture Center’s Building A on the Texas A&M campus. — one.arch.tamu.edu
Using tracer viruses, researchers found that contamination of just a single doorknob or table top results in the spread of viruses throughout office buildings, hotels, and health care facilities. Within 2 to 4 hours, the virus could be detected on 40 to 60 percent of workers and visitors in the facilities and commonly touched objects. — ScienceDaily
An initiative from Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments (ARCHIVE) is working to decrease infectious disease rates in Bangladesh through a simple housing intervention: concrete floors. Homes with dirt or mud floors are prime gateways for gastrointestinal and parasitic pathogens, and... View full entry
Sprinkling city parks with recycled water may create a breeding ground for hard-to-treat microbes [...] Even after the recycled water is treated in a sewage plant, it may carry microbes, drug-resistance genes and antibiotics that had washed down the drain. Sprayed into the environment, that water can spread microbes that could cause difficult-to-treat infections, the researchers say. — Science News
