This book is a manifesto for an alternative architectural philosophy. It draws on the latest research into microbes to rethink the past and possible futures of the built environment. If, as Vitruvius put it, “healthfulness” is the main objective of the architect, contemporary thinking about the microbiome offers a new understanding of health and therefore of architecture. We the Bacteria explores the intimate entanglements of the microbes within bodies and buildings over the last 10,000 years, culminating in the antibiotic philosophy of modern architecture and the current dysbiotic situation with a radical crisis of microbial diversity, the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and associated new diseases that are diseases of the built environment tied to systemic inequalities. Hostility to bacteria must give way to new forms of hospitality from a more biotic and symbiotic architecture that learns from bacteria, and reconnects with soil, plants, and other species.

Beatriz Colomina is the Howard Butler Crosby Professor in the School of Architecture and the founding director of the program in Media and Modernity at Princeton University. She has written extensively on questions of architecture, art, sexuality, and media. Her books include Radical Pedagogies (MIT Press, 2022); X-Ray Architecture (Lars Müller, 2018); Are We Human? Notes on an Archeology of Design (Lars Müller, 2016); The Century of the Bed (Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2015); Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies (Sternberg Press, 2014); Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X–197X (Actar, 2010); Domesticity at War (MIT Press, 2007); Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (MIT Press, 1994); and Sexuality and Space (Princeton Architectural Press, 1992). She has curated many exhibitions including Clip/Stamp/Fold (2006); Playboy Architecture (2012); Radical Pedagogies (2013–15); and Sick Architecture (2022). She was curator with Mark Wigley of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial (2016).

Mark Wigley is professor of architecture and dean emeritus at Columbia University. He is a historian, theorist, and critic who explores the intersection of architecture, art, philosophy, culture, and technology. His recent books include: Konrad Wachsmann’s Television: Post-Architectural Transmissions (Sternberg Press, 2020); Passing Through Architecture: The 10 Years of Gordon Matta-Clark (Power Station of Art, 2019); Cutting Matta-Clark: The Anarchitecture Investigation (Lars Muller, 2018); Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design (with Beatriz Colomina, Lars Muller, 2016); and Buckminster Fuller Inc.: Architecture in the Age of Radio (Lars Muller, 2014); White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture, (MIT Press, 1995); The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt, (MIT Press, 1993). He has curated exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, The Drawing Center, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the Power Station of Art in Shanghai.