Life Indoors

In this timely and expansive book, Wakefield-Rann investigates how emerging disease ecologies are undermining definitions of health and immunity that have persisted since the 19th century, and had a formative influence over the design of not only homes, but entire cities. This wide-ranging account traces the links between the history of medicine, modernist design and architecture, the rise of inflammatory disease, the microbiomes of buildings and humans, antimicrobial resistance, and novel chemical pollutants, to show how indoor environments have made us as we have made them. In highlighting the processes that have been missed in designing perfectly controlled interior habitats, Life Indoors shows the limitations of dominant practices, classifications and philosophies to apprehend current indoor pathogen ecologies.

Presents a novel qualitative research framework for investigating health and indoor ecologies Develops practical insights to guide future, interdisciplinary research Written in an accessible style that will have broad appeal

Autorentext

Dr Rachael Wakefield-Rann is a Senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Inhalt
Introduction.- 1. Pathogens as Substances: Hygiene, Germs and Domestic Design.- 2. Inflammatory Urban Atmospheres: Biodiversity, Climate Control, and the Materiality of Buildings.- 3. The Ecology Makes the Poison: Toxicant Exposure, Antimicrobial Logic and the Biology of History.- 4. A Relational Approach to Life Indoors.