Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture

A real gem:

 

Imperfect Health by Lars Müller Publishers is a collection of essays, photographs, and informative blurbs (each distinguished in the table of contents by groupings of key words – from asthma and allergies to longevity and retirement). The book is a visually-engaging, comprehensive study of the history of the medicalization of architecture. The book tracks how the 20th century notion of the city has changed from that of a “sick body” that infects  its citizens to the 21st century idea of the city as a therapeutic instrument that ‘cures’ its citizens.


Ultimately, Borasi and Zardini argue that this concept is misguided in its impossibility and moralism. What is needed in our society is the demedicalization of architecture: to place it outside of the moralism of medicalized discourse and shift the role of architecture from that which cures, to that which cares.


The book is published in collaboration with the CCA, Montreal on the occasion of the exhibition Imperfect Health: The Medicalization of Architecture. The exhibit is accompanied by an online TV channel.