Book Presentation: Sick Architecture

The Rotterdam launch of Sick Architecture with the editors and contributors of the publication.

Join editors Beatriz Colomina, Nick Axel, and Guillermo S. Arsuaga, as well as contributors Simon De Nys-Ketels and Mark Wigley, for the Rotterdam launch of Sick Architecture.

Illnesses, wellness, and architecture are inseparable. Sick Architecture is a thought-provoking essay collection about how architecture and sickness are interwoven—from ancient Greece to present-day New York City. Medical professionals and architects have always been in a kind of dance, often influencing one another, though the dance is not always synchronized.

Drawing on a wide range of historical and contemporary case studies, Sick Architecture highlights a theme that has shaped life from the very beginnings of architecture to the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. The book extends beyond sicknesses recognized by the medical profession to ask: What aspects of society may be ill, in need of care, or subject to pathologization? Likewise, it looks beyond buildings and cities to interrogate architecture’s policies, protocols, and spatial logics. With thirty-five diverse essays, Sick Architecture traces moments in global history when shifting notions of health became vectors for architectural practice and discourse—and when, conversely, architecture itself functioned as a reservoir and vector of illness.