Bianchetti_Bodies.-Between-Space-and-Desi_9783868599497

24
THE SICK BODY
of health as a collective asset, became capable of implementing policies to
improve health; that is, policies encouraging citizens to lead an active life.
Efforts a little like those Neutra’s rich, learned client, Lovell, used to write
about in the Los Angeles Times in the fifties when he suggested that we should
go to bed early, exercise extensively, and eat well. In short, suggestions that
made sense, that were destined for a level of structural imperfection, for
contradictions generated by best intentions. A coerced effort by the body was
to our advantage; so much so that, a few years ago, an interesting exhibition
by the Canadian Centre of Architecture (meaningfully entitled “Imperfect
Health”) 50 illustrated an extensive study of this society obsessed with wellness
and ready to insert the idea of physical, biological, social, and cultural wellbeing
into the Healthy City concept. The idea was embodied in technical,
methodical directives, accompanied by a new, subtly moralistic philosophy
(healthism) built once again with individual, responsible awareness of the
body at its hub. 51
There are countless ways in which design cures and has cured the body. By
projecting it in space, as in the organic analogy; by reconciling its ambivalence
with old and new protocols that refer to codes as well as normalising
and indicating simple categories: organisms to be healed, labour to be
employed, the unconscious to be freed. Design cures the body by acting on
space; by disembowelling, cleaning, bringing air, water and light, by organising
pathways, and by disciplining uses. Its action combines space and body
or merges body and space. Space renders manifest the presence of the body
and its condition as a healthy or sick body shaped by neuroses or desire.
Today, the topic of a healthy space, a healthy city, has regained a strong physical
and political connotation. Roads, squares, neighbourhoods, and cities
are healthy. They are spaces in which individuals are protected from illnesses;
spaces filled with all kinds of vegetal essences and scales.
Who Do We Choose to Help?
Neutra’s way forward undoubtedly appears more refined than those of the
contemporary Healthy City because the latter are less direct and deterministic.
But the problem remains: how can we cure the body by addressing
it, signifying it, capturing the tension between what it brings with it and
what it has lost (health, identity, sexuality, strength, and youth) and, at the
same time, turn physical space into something material, stable, and heavy?
How can we avoid overly hasty, conventional and insufficient answers: