“Sick Architecture” opened on May 5th at CIVA in Brussels. Co-curated by Beatriz Colomina, the exhibition investigates the intrinsic relation between architecture and sickness. The architectural discourse always weaves itself through theories of body and brain, constructing the architect as a kind of doctor and the client as the patient. Architecture has been portrayed as a form of prevention and cure for thousands of years. Yet architecture is also often the cause of illness, from the institution of hospitals to toxic building materials and sick building syndrome. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted this topic.
The exhibition curators observe that every age is marked by its “signature affliction,” which influenced its architecture. The age of bacterial diseases, particularly tuberculosis, has shaped the image of modern architecture in the early decades of the 20th century. During this time, architects began to imagine their work as prevention, treatment, and even cure, thus designing white buildings detached from the “humid ground where disease breeds,” as Le Corbusier put it. Houses became not just a medical device for preventing disease but also had to provide psychological comfort, or as Richard Neutra put it, “nervous health.”
In the current age, the prevalence of neurological disorders influences the contemporary experience of architecture and the built environment. Meanwhile, the pandemic has reshaped architecture and urbanism. The crisis exposed structural inequalities of race, class, and gender, provoking a call for social transformations and perhaps an architectural revolution. The exhibition opens these matters for discussion and contemplation, offering a framework for discussing broader historical and conceptual topics.
Curated by Beatriz Colomina, CIVA curator Silvia Franceschini and Nikolaus Hirsch, CIVA’s artistic director, the exhibition provides the basis for conversations on the theme of architecture and sickness, with materials ranging from the historic quarantine architecture at Ellis Island and the old lazzaretto in Venice to modern architecture by Aino and Alvar Aalto and Henri Lacoste, 1960’s experiments by Hans Hollein and Coop Himmelb(l)au, as well as contemporary work by architects 51N4E, Elizabeth Diller, architecten Jan De Vylder Inge Vinck, Andrés Jaque, artists Sammy Baloji, Vivian Caccuri, Goldin+Senneby, and Ahmet Öğüt.
