Beatriz Colomina: Architecture as disease and cure.

Bellerophon, son of Poseidon and Eurynome, slew the Chimera and, full of hubris, believed he had a rightful place on Mount Olympus among the gods and set off there on his winged horse, Pegasus. Zeus did not like this and sent a gadfly to sting Pegasus, which threw Bellerophon, who fell back to Earth and died. 

The story of modernism has maybe been a little tinged by hubris too. We have defeated all the monsters, presented an architecture and urbanism which proclaims it will do away with social and pathological ills, if only we would let it, and thus deserves a place among the deities. But perhaps, as covid showed, modernism has somewhat over-played its hand. The monsters got amongst us again. 

In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast - the 200th - I spoke to the great architectural historian and theorist, Beatriz Colomina, Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture at Princeton University, about some small parts of the recently published book, Sick Architecture, which she edited with Nick Axel, Guillermo S. Arsuaga and e-flux Architecture and published with MIT Press. In the book, 35 essays from around the world present ways architecture has both engaged with sickness as illness, but also as structure, logic and motivation.

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Music credits: ⁠Bruno Gillick 

Image credit: Borja Sanchez-Trillo/Comunidad de Madrid via Getty Images.