X-Ray Architecture

This book explores the impact of medical discourse and diagnostic technologies on the formation, representation, and reception of modern architecture. It suggests that modern architecture was shaped by the dominant medical obsession of its time, tuberculosis, and its primary diagnostic tool, the X-ray, and presents architecture as a medical instrument for protecting and enhancing the body.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 200 pages
\n Publication date: 31 March 2018
\n Publisher: Lars Muller Publishers
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This captivating book delves into the profound impact of medical discourse and diagnostic technologies on the formation, representation, and reception of modern architecture. It challenges the conventional understanding of modern architecture by proposing that the architecture of the early twentieth century was significantly shaped by the prevailing medical obsession of that era: tuberculosis and its primary diagnostic tool, the X-ray. If architectural discourse has traditionally been intertwined with the building and the body, the body that it describes is the medical body, reconstructed by each new theory of health. Modern architects presented their architecture as a kind of medical instrument designed to protect and enhance the body. X-ray technology and modern architecture emerged around the same time, evolving in parallel. While the X-ray exposed the inner workings of the body to the public eye, the modern building unveiled its interior, inverting the traditional relationship between private and public spaces. Colomina suggests that if we want to understand the state of the art in buildings, we should look to the dominant obsessions about illness and the latest techniques of imaging the body. By doing so, we can explore the potential effects these obsessions and technologies have on our conception of architecture and the built environment.

\n Weight: 536g\n
Dimension: 227 x 166 x 23 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9783037784433\n \n