Rush Tuberculosis Hospital and Sanatorium Construction, 1911
Image: Thomas Spees Carrington
Libraries virtual exhibit explores how pandemics affect architecture
March 23, 2021
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Penn State University Libraries’Architecture and Landscape Architecture Library has launched a virtual display, Pandemic Spaces (1918 Edition), to explore how architecture related to the devastating influenza epidemic of 1918. The exhibit was introduced early this month for public viewing, notably for individuals interested in the intersection between architecture and history.
As current global quarantines have shown, a pandemic requires expanded hospital space and restrictions on gathering spaces, and prompts reconsiderations of future building needs. The exhibit includes buildings from hospitals to housing, showing how approaches to space during the 1918 flu made use of existing structures and reinforced changes already afoot in architecture. The website explores challenges uni