Can architecture make you ill? Does a particular illness have its own architecture? Is architecture contagious? Or could architecture help us overcome illnesses such as cancer? These questions are at the heart of the exhibition Sick Architecture, at the CIVA in Brussels. You won’t get a straightforward answer straight away; rather, the exhibition aims to make us aware of how architecture has been and continues to be used over the centuries to prevent, banish or cure disease – a subject that has come to the fore again with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. ‘There is no disease without architecture, and no architecture without disease,’ says Beatriz Colomina, one of the curators.

The exhibition begins with the historic quarantine architecture of the old Lazzaretto Vecchio in Venice. It is no coincidence that the archipelago is called the ‘Islands of Sorrow’: between 1403 and 1630, the island housed leper colonies, hospitals and quarantine centres. Ellis Island, too, served as a segregation station for many years. Between 1900 and 1950, New York was the main destination for working-class immigrants entering the United States. Each of them first had to undergo a physical and mental examination at the immigration station on Ellis Island. Its architecture reflects the complexity of the entire immigration system, where ideologies concerning modernity, health, race and class become intertwined.