One of the most tragic things that can happen to a parent is losing their beloved child. It’s never easy to talk about the death of a child. Help and support for families where the children suffer a serious illness is insufficient in Czechia. The proposed children’s hospice House for Julie in Brno is hoping to change that. We spoke with the hospice director Radka Vernerová and the project architects studio Čtyřstěn.

Professing its affinity with city block urbanism, the student housing project in Prague Holešovice closely follows the building line while adding generous new public ground-floor spaces facing the tree-lined sidewalk. This was how a typical sort of development in Old Holešovice once looked. But it’s barely noticeable now, with only a few scattered buildings from the turn of the 20th century left. Grandiose socialist transport infrastructure projects severely damaged the urban character. The ambition behind the new student housing was to revive the long lost atmosphere, strengthen the street network, and thus make one of the first steps towards a vibrant future city neighborhood.

 ...aneb o tom, jak si pod sebou jako architekti někdy dobrovolně řežeme větev

We’ve decided to dedicate two issues, back-to-back, to a single subject for the very first time. We’ve been developing the concept of the healthcare issue, together with guest-editor Irena Hradecká, since last December, until it finally grew too big and complex to fit in one magazine. Architecture of Health came out in February and it was, paradoxically, mostly about disease. By the same token, Architecture of Care will be a lot about death. After all, both are natural parts of life, much as we like to tell ourselves otherwise.

In her newest book X-Ray Architecture, architectural historian and theorist Beatriz Colomina analyzes the connection between architecture and disease. She looks at the relationship between tuberculosis and the evolution and growing popularity of modern architecture. She also asks how different pathologies of the beginning of the 20th century, like post-war trauma or the industrialization of cities, affected architecture. Last but not least, she considers the wider societal influence of new technological discoveries in medical diagnosis and practice.