Beatriz Colomina

X-Ray Architecture

X-Ray Architecture explores the enormous impact of medical discourse and imaging technologies on the formation, representation and reception of twentieth-century architecture. It challenges the normal understanding of modern architecture by proposing that it was shaped by the dominant medical obsession of its time: tuberculosis and its primary diagnostic tool, the X-ray.

Modern architecture and the X-ray were born around the same time and evolved in parallel. While the X-ray exposed the inside of the body to the public eye, the modern building unveiled its interior, dramatically inverting the relationship between private and public. Architects presented their buildings as a kind of medical instrument for protecting and enhancing the body and psyche.

Beatriz Colomina traces the psychopathologies of twentieth-century architecture—from the trauma of tuberculosis to more recent disorders such as burn-out syndrome and ADHD—and the huge transformations of privacy and publicity instigated by diagnostic tools from X-Rays to MRIs and beyond. She suggests that if we want to talk about the state of architecture today, we should look to the dominant obsessions with illness and the latest techniques of imaging the body—and ask what effects they have on the way we conceive architecture.

X-Ray Architecture explores the enormous impact of medical discourse and imaging technologies on the formation, representation and reception of twentieth-century architecture. It challenges the normal understanding of modern architecture by proposing that it was shaped by the dominant medical obsession of its time: tuberculosis and its primary diagnostic tool, the X-ray.

Modern architecture and the X-ray were born around the same time and evolved in parallel. While the X-ray exposed the inside of the body to the public eye, the modern building unveiled its interior, dramatically inverting the relationship between private and public. Architects presented their buildings as a kind of medical instrument for protecting and enhancing the body and psyche.

Beatriz Colomina traces the psychopathologies of twentieth-century architecture—from the trauma of tuberculosis to more recent disorders such as burn-out syndrome and ADHD—and the huge transformations of privacy and publicity instigated by diagnostic tools from X-Rays to MRIs and beyond. She suggests that if we want to talk about the state of architecture today, we should look to the dominant obsessions with illness and the latest techniques of imaging the body—and ask what effects they have on the way we conceive architecture.


“ [...] a fascinating essay on the relationship between architecture and medicine in the early 20th century.
Archidose

“A new theory of architecture is on the horizon.”
Bomb Magazine

“Beatriz Colomina is one of the most exciting voices in architecture [...].”
Archdaily

“You don’t have to be passionate about architecture to be engrossed in this book.
we make money not art


Author(s): Beatriz Colomina

Design: Integral Lars Müller

15 × 20 cm, 6 × 7 ¾ in

200 pages, 277 illustrations

hardback

2019, 978-3-03778-443-3, English
CHF 40.00

Beatriz Colomina

Beatriz Colomina is an architecture theorist, historian, and curator. She is Professor of Architecture and Director of the Media and Modernity program at Princeton University and has written extensively on questions of architecture, art, sexuality and media. In her research, she traces the psychopathologies of twentieth-century architecture and the huge transformations of privacy and publicity instigated by diagnostic tools from X-Rays to MRIs and beyond.

Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini, CCA Montréal (eds.)

Imperfect Health

CHF 55.00
also available in French

Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini, CCA Montréal (eds.)

En imparfaite santé

CHF 55.00
also available in English