Architecture is Clinical

As part of the PhD course on Contemporary Critical Approaches in Architecture, the exhibition is curated from the readings in Beatriz Colomina’s book ​‘X‑Ray Architecture’. The exhibition brings forth the author’s alternative lens for critically examining architectural modernism.

Inauguration on 8^th April, 5.00 PM onwards, Piraji Sagara Basement

In the 20^th century, architects from Le Corbusier to Mies van der Rohe to Alvar Aalto were all obsessed with illnesses. Corbusier says “ The old city has to be destroyed and a new architecture should emerge because it produces tuberculosis.’’

Beatriz Colomina, in her book, X‑Ray Architecture, challenged the conventional narrative of the evolution of modern architecture by bringing to the forefront deeper connections between architects and clients and the health-related zeitgeist of the early 20^th Century. The author presents a radical perspective on how anxieties surrounding disease, hygiene, nervous disorders, sexuality, and the modern body profoundly shaped architectural thought and practice. She argues that these were the motivating factors behind the revolution, we recognize as modern architecture.

This exhibition is a curation that captures the lens through which Beatriz Colomina views modern buildings — as instruments of cure and control, spaces designed to regulate light, air, visibility, and behavior, reflecting broader medical and social discourses of the time. Through this framework, modern architecture can be reconsidered as a spatial manifestation of a society attempting to heal, discipline, and redefine the ​‘modern’ lifestyle.