Brief Introduction

The establishment of the modern city has always been inseparable from defense against disease. To some extent, the legitimacy of modernism is based precisely on an architectural understanding of contagious diseases and their means of transmission. Yet, this has long been neglected within the orthodox discipline that has urban form and function as its main focus. We need to recognize that the nature of the modern city is the management of substance, energy, waste, and speed, not individual buildings, which is merely the interface where these elements converge. From the sewerage systems of ancient Rome to the global containment of Covid-19 today, the recognition of disease and the treatment of filth is synchronized with the development of modernity, which foreshadows an epistemological apparatus of man and the fundamental humanity of overcome nature. Human evolution is externalized and accomplished in a world constituted by technology.