Two Experts in Quarantine Architecture Predict How the Pandemic Will Affect Our Homes
Authors Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley started writing "Until Proven Safe," a book about medieval quarantine architecture, long before COVID-19.
Authors Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley started writing "Until Proven Safe," a book about medieval quarantine architecture, long before COVID-19.
Writers Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley saw this coming. They knew a global pandemic was entirely plausible, even likely. But the couple couldn’t have guessed that they would be wrapping up a book on quarantine architecture in the midst of one.
While researching their book, Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley toured some of the earliest quarantine facilities in Europe, including this lazaretto in Dubrovnik, Croatia, which was built in the 17th century. It now houses an arts center.
Photo courtesy of Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh
The writers approach the topic of quarantine from different perspectives. Manaugh is the author of A Burglar’s Guide to the City and the long-running BLDGBLOG. (He is also a former Dwell editor.) Twilley contributes to the New Yorker and cohosts the podcast Gastropod. She is currently working on The Birth of Cool, a book about refrigeration.
Lord Byron and members of the British royal family were among those who quarantined in Malta’s massive facility (pictured), which dates from the 16th century.
Photo courtesy of Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh
Their project began in 2009, when they visited a former quarantine facility near Sydney that had been turned into a luxury hotel. It sparked a fascination with how disease outbreaks have shaped our architecture, cities, and societies. It also prompted years of research, an exhibition, and now the book, due out next spring from the MCD Books division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. When what they thought was a "probably someday" scenario turned into almost everyone’s reality, the title, of course, had to change; it went from The Coming Quarantine to Until Proven Safe.
A network of lazarettos still stands around the Venetian lagoon (pictured). "The facilities were model institutions in terms of their internal organization, both architectural and bureaucratic," says Manaugh. "They included separate sleeping quarters for those in quarantine and those overseeing them, as well as separate spaces for airing and disinfecting cargo." In some ruins, there is graffiti drawn centuries ago by people waiting out their quarantines.
Photo courtesy of Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh
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