The spread of a pandemic creeps into space, suddenly making it inadequate: with unpredictable temporalities it establishes the dualism between the healthy and the sick. Today we call the pandemic an ‘unprecedented event’, but it is yet another chapter in a long sequence of health crises linked to the diffusion of contagious diseases, of which we have evidence since the most ancient times. Some of these epidemics - such as leprosy, plague, tuberculosis - generated, between the High Middle Ages and the Modern Age, specific architectures whose construction lasted until the twentieth century, for hosting the sick, to contain them, separate them, hide them, perhaps cure them. In fact, leprosy hospitals, lazarettos and sanatoriums are places destined not so much to the improbable cure of the respective pathologies, but to the segregation and exclusion of those who convey the infection and who, above all, visibly prefigure the stigma on their bodies. These heterotopies, at the same time, made possible to contain the contagion, to realize the distance and isolation necessary for the interruption of pathological contacts, they determined, in their internal structure, typological models capable of sublimating organization, control, separation, with the chance to decline in the plural an indefinite repetition of distinct single existences, responding to needs that the current pandemic proposes again. Largely abandoned, these places can today be questioned with a new point of view, suspending the judgment on the abominations that they have materialized and still represent. Their ability to concretize, through formal and typological characters, individual and, at the same time, collective housing models leads us to ask ourselves if today they can offer themselves as a heritage to be reused for the needs of the health crisis and as a repertoire of solutions and aberrations from which to draw a renewed teaching. On these assumptions, the contribution aims to investigate two questions: if history can be a mirror to understand the present pandemic, is it possible that historical architecture designed for similar situations can now constitute a lesson for contemporary project? The heterotopic character of these spaces, their horrible history and their controversial meaning represent an irreducible obstacle to their actualization or is it possible, stripping them of their original intentions, that the bare architectural conformation resists and offers itself as an unexpected teaching?
Maieutic aberrations. Can the heterotopias conceived for historical plagues teach us anything about today’s pandemic space?
Andrea Manca;Francesca Musanti;Claudia Pintor
2024-01-01
Abstract
The spread of a pandemic creeps into space, suddenly making it inadequate: with unpredictable temporalities it establishes the dualism between the healthy and the sick. Today we call the pandemic an ‘unprecedented event’, but it is yet another chapter in a long sequence of health crises linked to the diffusion of contagious diseases, of which we have evidence since the most ancient times. Some of these epidemics - such as leprosy, plague, tuberculosis - generated, between the High Middle Ages and the Modern Age, specific architectures whose construction lasted until the twentieth century, for hosting the sick, to contain them, separate them, hide them, perhaps cure them. In fact, leprosy hospitals, lazarettos and sanatoriums are places destined not so much to the improbable cure of the respective pathologies, but to the segregation and exclusion of those who convey the infection and who, above all, visibly prefigure the stigma on their bodies. These heterotopies, at the same time, made possible to contain the contagion, to realize the distance and isolation necessary for the interruption of pathological contacts, they determined, in their internal structure, typological models capable of sublimating organization, control, separation, with the chance to decline in the plural an indefinite repetition of distinct single existences, responding to needs that the current pandemic proposes again. Largely abandoned, these places can today be questioned with a new point of view, suspending the judgment on the abominations that they have materialized and still represent. Their ability to concretize, through formal and typological characters, individual and, at the same time, collective housing models leads us to ask ourselves if today they can offer themselves as a heritage to be reused for the needs of the health crisis and as a repertoire of solutions and aberrations from which to draw a renewed teaching. On these assumptions, the contribution aims to investigate two questions: if history can be a mirror to understand the present pandemic, is it possible that historical architecture designed for similar situations can now constitute a lesson for contemporary project? The heterotopic character of these spaces, their horrible history and their controversial meaning represent an irreducible obstacle to their actualization or is it possible, stripping them of their original intentions, that the bare architectural conformation resists and offers itself as an unexpected teaching?
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