The various forms of crisis that we are experiencing—financial, environmental, health—are symptoms of a change in the cycle that is causing double stress on existing power structures. On the one hand, it is becoming increasingly clear that certain global threats are beyond the power of weakened political entities. It seems obvious that the planet-scale condition of the new challenges calls for more powerful alliances and the constitution of instruments of organization and global governance. These changes will involve concatenated transfers of sovereignty and expanded collaboration systems to adjust the strength of the resulting agencies to the scale of the challenges. On the other hand, due to the fear inoculated by these larger-scale forces, an opposite movement is arising, tending towards protectionism. In this context, as a cultural and material practice that is highly sensitive to changes in political and economic structures, architecture needs to reinforce and expand its operational capacities to be able to work outside its comfort zone. This is necessary not only because of the readjustment of the agents involved in political decision-making but also due to the rapid evolution of the models and categories used to address the built environment.
In my fast-tracked reading around virology during the days of confinement, there is one article that I find especially thought-provoking. Virologist Esteban Domingo explains that his main contribution to research on viruses was to turn from a conception of the virus linked to the idea of stability and uniqueness with immutable genetic material towards a model where a virus is “a cloud of mutants”, different but groupable in “viral quasi-species”.(1) This turn from oneness to a changing multiplicity is radical. It allows the mutant cloud to resist specific attacks, as some will fall, but others will follow their course. The mutant cloud is diverse in nature, with local variants still maintaining a certain group coherence. The implications of this model are enormous. As Esteban Domingo explains: “… the virus is diverse and is prepared to respond to various environments that may arise. In other words, a virus is not only adapted at any given time to an environment, be it a cell or a person, but, since it is a cloud of mutants, it has the potential to look for other places to multiply and adapt. Mutation is not an extraordinary event. Mutation is its modus vivendi. It is its way of working.”