The advent of antibiotics from the mid-C20th ushered in a generation of healthcare building design premised on deep-density and high-rise architectural arrangements. Antibiotics arguably made possible new concentrations of scale in the delivery of healthcare services, registering a turn away from the immediate atmosphere and space of the body. The rise of pandemic infections increasingly resistant to antibiotics (AMR) has led to a revival of interest in pre-antibiotic imaginaries and, in parallel, a return to the immanent environment of the body. 

In just this way, Covid-19 has called into question fundamental ways of living and building at odds with a conception of bodies rooted in their relationships to one-another and to the biotic. Both AMR and COVID-19 represent radical ‘airquakes’ (Sloterdijk), a turn towards the problematic nature of air, atmosphere, ventilation, lighting and sunlight. Here I want to explore emerging imaginaries bubbling up at the interface of bodies, buildings and bugs in the post-AMR/post-COVID world. I want to think about new kinds of immunitary defences premised on an affirmative ‘spherology of the body’ located in co-immunity with the biotic and with building design.