Keynote – Beatriz Colomina

Design Academy Eindhoven and Kunstinstitut Melly are pleased to welcome architecture historian and theorist Beatriz Colomina to DAE for a keynote lecture.

Colomina’s lecture will examine the paradigms of 20th Century health and architecture, challenging the normal understanding of modern architecture by proposing that it was shaped by the dominant medical obsession of its time: tuberculosis and its primary diagnostic tool, the X-ray.

The lecture draws upon her 2019 monograph ‘X-ray Architecture (Lars Müller Publishers), which traces the psychopathologies of twentieth-century architecture—from the trauma of tuberculosis to more recent disorders such as burn-out syndrome and ADHD—and the huge transformations of privacy and publicity instigated by diagnostic tools from X-Rays to MRIs and beyond.

This special event has been organised by the five DAE Master programmes, DAE communications & presentations department in collaboration with Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly Witte de With) and Het Nieuwe Instituut.

It is part of the programming for 84 STEPS, which has transformed an entire floor of the Kunstinstituut Melly’s building in Rotterdam to create a space for socialising art.

The lecture will take place in DAE’s auditorium, but space is very limited due to Covid-19. A free livestream of the event will be available here.