Other spaces of quarantine

This forum came about following conversations about the impact of the pandemic on architecture which brought attention to architectural histories related to hygiene, disease, and quarantine. The emptying of public spaces – railway stations, libraries, streets – and the closure of retail, cafes, and restaurants presented a reversal of the histories of public and private architectures. With the lockdown, hybrid use of domestic architecture was profiled. The dominant detached house with its outdoor spaces was revealed as a forgiving architectural typology during periods of restricted movement; at the same time, its endemic privatisation also served to hide domestic violence further. In contrast, public housing may have become the rare architectural typology of a pandemic “publicness” as underprivileged and migrant residents sought to maintain social distance within narrow shared corridors, inadequate or faulty elevators, and manually operable doorways. This was exemplified in the Victorian government’s two-week complete lockdown a public housing estate in North Melbourne raising community concerns about the racialised management of multicultural and vulnerable communities. Much closer analysis and detail of the inequalities are needed to trace the shocking images of this example of police-enforced lockdown. Neglect was also at the centre of the rising death toll in aged-care homes revealing the consequences of mismanagement and private institutionalised programmes of quasi-medical domesticity, in which elderly residents were trapped.