The American sociologist, Richard Sennet, said that the transforming power resides in the fact that epidemics afflict both the rich and the poor. Therefore, it is inevitable. And it is that curiously, diseases, epidemics and advances in design and architecture have historically gone hand in hand.

In this article, we will do a historical review of events similar to the one that we have experienced in recent months and we will see how the advance of the Covid-19 epidemic has exposed the need for broad changes in the way in which buildings have been planned and built for the time being.

HISTORICAL DISEASES TREATED WITH ARCHITECTURE

| «Disease is what modernized architecture, not only new materials and technologies» – Beatriz Colomina

In the 19th century, during the Industrial Revolution, the first urban planning laws were born in order to control infectious diseases that spread rapidly and for which the cure was not known.

For example, the fight against cholera epidemics in the 19th century prompted the construction of new plumbing and sewerage systems as well as the creation of new zoning laws to avoid overcrowding. At the beginning of the 20th century, many architects referred to measurements used by doctors and nurses instead of the theories themselves learned from architecture in order to
make viable projects that would help to stop tuberculosis.

THE FIRST REINFORCED CONCRETE BUILDING IN SWITZERLAND

The changes taking place in the treatments of epidemics are usually accompanied by an alteration of the architectural space that allows their implementation.