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.

The renovation of the ruins of the Helfštýn castle, perched on a rocky knoll over the town of Týn nad Bečvou near Olomouc, was finally completed last year after years of meticulous archeological examination, masonry and render restoration. But it wasn’t really a renovation in the common sense of the word, nor was it the sort of romantic reimagining and rebuilding once so popular with these types of historical monuments. The majority of changes, including safety pile foundations, bracing of walls, or restoring the existing old renders, will stay invisible to the visitors. The only conspicuous contemporary element is a new glass roof and a polished-concrete and corten-steel visitor route.

During last year, the connection between architecture and health has been questioned and discussed more often than in the last hundred years. Responding to the pandemic, architects and theorists started sharing their views on how this experience will change cities and room layouts, which design concerns will be brought forward, and which of those concerns will be forgotten. Understandably, open-plan offices (condemned, irrespective of the pandemic) became a hot topic for debate. The key building type in this situation, the hospital, received far less attention.

In an interview with a Lisbon based architect of Czech origins and a Prague based architect of Portuguese origins, we reveal a little bit of the beauty and mystery of Portuguese architecture. We remember certain natural and political events and discuss their effects, we visit the schools of Porto and Lisbon and their famous professors, and finally we contemplate architecture’s place in the world and the role of the architect in society today.