Architectural theorist, Beatriz Colomina, maintains that modernity is driven by illness and that architecture is part of the cultural project which seeks to project human illness as the suspension of life outside the body. Colomina discusses how modern architecture, initiated by a group of avant-garde architects in the 1920s from around the world, has been cast historically in terms of its “functional efficiency,” new technologies of construction, and the aesthetic of the machine. Colomina counters this framing and makes the argument that the body is the focus of modern architecture, especially the construction of the metropolis. Leaning upon largely German architecture theory from the early twentieth century, Colomina links this era of architecture to the dominant medical theme of the era, tuberculosis.
Having studied the architecture of Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, Colomina’s work examines the relationship between modern architecture and the emerging media of the time which was photography, illustrated magazines, and cinema. And from her work into this interdisciplinary examination of architecture, Colomina’s focus was quickly brought to the intersection of architecture and the body—where tuberculosis and modern architecture revealed the socially repressed. Colomina elaborates here her theory on the parallels of x-ray architecture and the somatic:
Health has always been a key responsibility for architects. What has changed is the concept of health. I am…