Isolation, Quarantine, Infection Control

To separate and isolate the ill have been important goals in medicine, in cultural practices, and in the resulting architectural forms when faced with the urgent problem of infection in society. In history, the isolation settings that have been designed and built were almost universally well distanced from the daily life of the community. The lazaretto, the pesthouse, the monastery infirmary, and the fever hospital are early examples of architects answering the call of science (of the time) and society to provide that all-important separation and isolation. Buildings that were specifically designed to isolate and treat difficult diseases include the Paimio Hospital by Alvaar Alto in 1932 and the Saranac Cure Cottages, such as the 1915 Trudeau Sanatorium that addressed tuberculosis, the massive general hospitals of Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, and the so-called plague hospitals in North America that resulted from an imperfect understanding of the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918. As knowledge grew, and especially as the germ theory of disease displaced the miasma theory of disease, designers collaborated with the medical world to create life-sustaining health care environments that call on different approaches to prevent the spread of infectious disease.