{"id":258537,"date":"2025-12-01T10:01:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T09:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aarch.dk\/?p=258537"},"modified":"2026-03-25T11:09:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T10:09:24","slug":"colomina-wigley-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aarch.dk\/en\/colomina-wigley-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Beatriz Colomina & Mark Wigley"},"content":{"rendered":"
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OPEN Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n

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BEATRIZ COLOMINA & MARK WIGLEY<\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div><\/section>\n


This conversation was first published for OPEN Architecture Festival, Issue Five (2025): In the Eyes of the Ordinary.
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In conversation with Ida Bjerga & Osmo Hadad-Lange\u2028
Written by Ida Bjerga

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n

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Health is increasingly understood through the lens of the microbiome\u2014the trillions of microbes that sustain and protect us every day. But what happens when we shift that lens to architecture? What does it mean to think about buildings in terms of microbiomes?<\/p>\n

Beatriz Colomina is a globally recognised architectural historian and theorist whose work spans architecture, art, technology, sexuality, and media. She is the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of Architecture at Princeton University and the founding director of its interdisciplinary Media and Modernity Programme. Mark Wigley is a historian, theorist, and critic working at the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology. He is Professor of Architecture and Dean Emeritus at Columbia University. Together, Colomina and Wigley co-curated the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial in 2016 under the theme Are We Human?. Most recently, they collaborated on the 2025 Milan Triennale with the exhibition We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture and in the 2025 Venice Biennale with the installation The Other Side of the Hill.<\/p>\n

In their work, they argue that architecture has always been entangled with biological life\u2014particularly microbes\u2014and challenge modernity\u2019s obsession with cleanliness. Rather than viewing microbes as threats, they propose we see them as co-inhabitants, even co-designers, who shape how we live, build, and think. We (virtually) sat down with them to talk microbiomes and architecture, and to try to understand just how alive architecture really is. What follows is a text based on our conversation in June 2025.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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Health is increasingly understood through the lens of the microbiome\u2014the trillions of microbes that sustain and protect us every day. But what happens when we shift that lens to architecture? What does it mean to think about buildings in terms of microbiomes?<\/p>\n

Beatriz Colomina is a globally recognised architectural historian and theorist whose work spans architecture, art, technology, sexuality, and media. She is the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of Architecture at Princeton University and the founding director of its interdisciplinary Media and Modernity Programme. Mark Wigley is a historian, theorist, and critic working at the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology. He is Professor of Architecture and Dean Emeritus at Columbia University. Together, Colomina and Wigley co-curated the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial in 2016 under the theme Are We Human?. Most recently, they collaborated on the 2025 Milan Triennale with the exhibition We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture and in the 2025 Venice Biennale with the installation The Other Side of the Hill.<\/p>\n

In their work, they argue that architecture has always been entangled with biological life\u2014particularly microbes\u2014and challenge modernity\u2019s obsession with cleanliness. Rather than viewing microbes as threats, they propose we see them as co-inhabitants, even co-designers, who shape how we live, build, and think. We (virtually) sat down with them to talk microbiomes and architecture, and to try to understand just how alive architecture really is. What follows is a text based on our conversation in June 2025.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

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B: It\u2019s almost common knowledge today that we need a healthy microbiome. Most of us know we shouldn\u2019t be eating junk food, and that we\u2019re supposed to eat more fresh vegetables and fruits. People are taking probiotics, drinking kefir, brewing kombucha\u2014and who knows what. On a popular level, there\u2019s an awareness that we need to take care of our gut, and that there\u2019s a link between the gut and the brain, the gut and mental health, the gut and all sorts of diseases. We\u2019re seeing an increasing number of modern conditions\u2014autism, allergies, depression, obesity, autoimmune disorders, and many forms of cancer\u2014tied to an unhealthy microbiome.

M: But what most people don\u2019t seem to quite understand yet is just how much architecture has contributed to the diminishing diversity of bacteria in our gut, and how this loss of microbial diversity, driven by our built environment, has contributed to a massive decline in human health.

I: But let\u2019s rewind a bit\u2026

B: Architecture has caused illness from the very beginning, going as far back as the Neolithic period\u2014ever since we started going indoors and constructing sealed structures. The moment we moved indoors, diseases that had existed quietly for centuries, but had never been a problem, suddenly became widespread epidemics. Tuberculosis, for instance, along with many others, became endemic as a result of going indoors.

M: And to build on that\u2014when we talk today about poor indoor air quality, we have to remember that the very idea of \u201cindoor air\u201d is only about 10,000 years old. Humans only began constructing interiors fully separated from the outdoors around that time, which, in planetary terms, is just a few seconds ago. So this concept of \u201cindoors\u201d is a very recent idea. And, as it turns out, it\u2019s kind of a disastrous one.

B: In fact, already in 1884, in the context of a huge international health exhibition in London, a doctor remarked that \u201cman in constructing protection from the elements has created the conditions for disease.\u201d He may not have had much evidence at the time, but he was absolutely right. Recent excavations from the first Neolithic houses show skeletons with signs of tuberculosis.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>

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THE SANATORIUM MOVEMENT<\/h2>\n

B: Bacteria were only recognised as the cause of disease\u2014as the enemy\u2014in the late 19th century. And from that point on, architecture became resolutely antibacterial. Bacteria were demonised, and with good reason. People were dying of bacterial diseases at an unprecedented rate throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century. One in three people in major cities like Paris or London was dying of tuberculosis in the middle of the 19th century. And there was no medication for TB until a century later.
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In response, architects took it upon themselves to protect people from disease. That response took the form of modern architecture: open buildings with large terraces for sun and ventilation, and separation from the ground\u2014all designed as forms of prevention strategies against disease.
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The first effective antibiotic treatments for tuberculosis did not arrive until 1943. But due to the war, and the time it took to distribute the drugs globally, people continued to die of tuberculosis well into the mid-20th century. In the absence of a cure, people recovered in sanatoriums\u2014and those sanatoriums also helped prevent the spread of many other diseases. But more importantly, modern architecture, in many ways, saved millions of lives.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

AN ONGOING CAMPAIGN AGAINST BACTERIA<\/h2>\n

B: Antibiotics, too, saved millions of lives\u2014there\u2019s no question about that. But they also introduced a new set of problems, one of the biggest being the diminishing diversity of bacteria and the rise of antimicrobial resistance. Modern architecture also created its own monsters. It became increasingly hermetic, more closed off from the outdoors, with artificial ventilation and a lack of fresh air.
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M: And inside the home, we assembled a whole arsenal of chemicals, tools, brushes, and equipment\u2014all designed to fight bacteria. In a way, we\u2019ve all become enemies of bacteria. In fact, we\u2019re every day engaged in a slow, ongoing, genocidal campaign against bacteria.
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Of course, bacteria were only identified as the cause of disease in the late 19th century. But in the 20th century, we began to understand that they were also the cause of health. So we are only just starting to understand what microbes actually are. We\u2019ve had 10,000 years of architecture and permanent living indoors, but only a little over a century of even trying to understand bacteria.
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B: And it wasn\u2019t until the early 21st century that the first theories about the microbiome\u2014and the idea of microbial health\u2014began to make an impact at a popular level. So if architecture and health have always been connected, what happens now, in this moment, when our understanding of health is starting to change? What is healthy architecture?<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

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WE THE BACTERIA<\/h2>\n

M: Architecture was meant to be a home for humans, not for bacteria. But that\u2019s where it gets tricky. Because humans are microbial\u2014which is to say, bacterial. Each of us carries around a hundred trillion microbes. And it\u2019s not just that we\u2019re filled with them\u2014we\u2019re made of them. Every cell in our body is maintained by microbes. The oxygen we breathe is produced by bacteria. The world around us only exists because of bacteria. Life itself began with microbes some 4.5 billion years ago. In fact, nothing could be more ordinary than bacteria, because everything is bacteria.
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Take the immune system, for example. Many of us carry microbes linked to major diseases, but they don\u2019t cause problems because the immune system is already full of beneficial bacteria that occupy space. And when we acquire older microbes, ones that have been around for millions of years, they actually teach the newer ones what to do. Even if the new ones haven\u2019t faced a specific threat or disease before, the old ones know how to guide a defense. Our immune system keeps us healthy not by throwing out bacteria, but by allowing most of them to stay\u2014or even by inviting new ones in.
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The microbial world is a world of entanglements\u2014a system of relationships. A kind of world where different species live together and depend on each other. Modern architecture, you could say, was the opposite of that\u2014it was about disentanglement, about separation. But what we\u2019re starting to understand now is that healthy architecture would be the same as a healthy microbiome: a very biodiverse community of microbes. The problem is that, because of this long history of separation\u2014because of modern architecture and this slow genocide against bacteria\u2014we now have only half the microbial diversity we had before we invented architecture. Ten thousand years ago, we had twice as many microbes. This loss makes us very, very vulnerable. And right now, some of our scientific colleagues are saying this is an even bigger problem than climate change.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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BIOTIC ARCHITECTURE<\/h2>\n

M: I suppose we are historians and teachers, so our job is to highlight the central role that bacteria have played\u2014even long before they were recognised as such. That\u2019s why we try to write a different history.
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B: Only very recently have people begun to talk about the possibility of a more biotic architecture. With our exhibition We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture, at the 24th Milan Triennale, we show that bacteria are all about diverse interdependent communities\u2014and that we need to rethink what architecture means from the perspective of bacteria.
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The final section of the exhibition presents a range of experiments and speculative practices by contemporary architects exploring how architecture might become more biotic. One example is the work of Andr\u00e9s Jaque, whose Escuela Infantil El Chaparral (El Chaparral Kindergarten) in Madrid was one of his early experiments in microbes. It\u2019s a school designed not just for children, but for entire ecosystems. He used microbial and ecological principles to attract birds and insects to support trans-species life around the school\u2014it\u2019s really beautiful. But there were many other examples from all over the world, such as Paulo Tavares, a Brazilian architect and researcher working on spatial justice, Indigenous epistemologies, and the politics of the Amazon; Lydia Kallipoliti, a Greek architect, scholar, and theorist based in the U.S., known for her work on closed systems and environmental design; Philippe Rahm, a Swiss architect working with thermodynamics, atmosphere, and invisible forms of environmental design; and Daniela Mitterberger, an Austrian architect and researcher based in the U.S., whose work investigates synthetic ecologies and post-human materialities. Each brought a unique approach to what we call the \u201cPetri-dish\u201d\u2014a collective platform of material experiments and alternative architectural ways of doing. But the point is: there can never be one solution. There\u2019s never one answer. It\u2019s always multiple attempts to do something differently.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>

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NO PERFECT HOTEL FOR MICROBES<\/h2>\n

M: A huge problem we face today is that architecture has become a kind of monoculture. Buildings look the same everywhere, built from the same materials extracted from across the globe. They\u2019re insensitive to the world around them\u2014almost like spaceships. So what is healthy architecture? Well, as we\u2019ve said before, it would be like a healthy microbiome. Each of us carries around 100 trillion microbes, but each of us has a combination that\u2019s much more unique than a fingerprint. Thinking in microbial terms means thinking in terms of specific communities. And then the question becomes: how do you care for a community? Architecture, then, shouldn\u2019t be about the individual client of a particular house, or even just the citizens of a city. It should respond to the shifting, complex needs of microbial life. And if microbes are now the real clients, there\u2019s no one solution\u2014no perfect hotel for microbes.
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M: There are so many ways to begin thinking about this. One concrete example is when humans moved indoors 10,000 years ago, we separated ourselves from the soil. But it is at the top ten centimetres of the soil that about 25% of the planet\u2019s microbes live. Humans grew up in the soil like a plant\u2014we\u2019re kind of like plants, right? With architecture, we separated ourselves from the soil\u2014and thereby from the microbial world. Today, if you live in a city, you almost never see or touch soil. And when you do, it\u2019s often been treated with antibiotics, pesticides, or other chemicals. So, if we think about biotic architecture, maybe the first step is to bring the soil back inside\u2014along with plants, animals, and other species. And once you do that, the whole meaning of \u201cindoors\u201d begins to change. The responsibility is no longer to find a perfect solution, but to have everyone do different things. Encourage multiple attempts to try to do something, because there can never be just one answer.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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THINK IN, THROUGH, AND WITH BACTERIA<\/h2>\n

M: We think the real shift begins with mindset. If you start to think of yourself as microbial, as being a guest of your microbes, it changes everything. It\u2019s not that you have microbes; it\u2019s that microbes have you. You\u2019re just lucky to hang out within their world.

When you breathe, when you eat, you\u2019re receiving nutrients from the world through your gut\u2014and it\u2019s microbes that digest those nutrients, making them available to you. They regulate your entire system. Your intestines are directly connected to your brain. So even if we like to think humans are special because we can think, it\u2019s actually the microbes doing the thinking. Part of what we\u2019re saying is: if you start thinking in, through, and with bacteria, the concept of the ordinary changes. So does the concept of the extraordinary. The more you learn about bacteria, the more amazing it is! It\u2019s simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. And once you learn about bacteria and the bacterial community\u2014it\u2019s kind of hard to be interested in humans again.

So, if you decide: okay, I\u2019m going to be sensitive to the complicated, ever-changing needs of microbes\u2014then architecture can no longer stay the same. Imagine an interior starting with bacteria. Then the question becomes: how does the bacteria maintain the room? It has to bring things in from the outside. But there wasn\u2019t an outside before bacteria\u2014so it invents one. Today, architecture appears to be about creating an inside. But maybe it\u2019s actually about imagining an outside. So we end on this question: how might we imagine the outside in the future?

I hope we imagine it differently. Because otherwise, we\u2019re dead.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n<\/div><\/div>

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This conversation was first published for OPEN Architecture Festival, Issue Five (2025): In the Eyes of the Ordinary<\/em>.<\/span>
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The issue was produced by students from the Aarhus School of Architecture:
Ida Bjerga, Osmo Hadad-Lange, Alexander Skovgaard Bagger Hadi, and Birke Langkj\u00e6r Jakobsen.
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The non-profit project was supported by The Dreyer Foundation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Image credits: 1) Muhsin Akg\u00fcn, 2) CDC, 3) DSL Studio, 4) Clark van Der Beken, 5) DSL Studio, 6) CDC<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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