Our VDF collaboration with The World Around concludes with the premiere of a new film by Andrés Jaque and Ivan Munuera, which charts the global impact of coronavirus across a wide range of different scales.

Called The Transscalar Architecture of COVID-19, the 13-minute film explores the coronavirus pandemic through a montage of images of spaces of different scales – from microscopic images of the virus to maps showing its impact on global travel patterns and pollution levels.

Film charts impact of coronavirus on spaces large and small

It documents dramatic transformations of the built environment, including conference centres being converted into temporary hospitals and empty city streets being reclaimed by wildlife, and explores how the pandemic is affecting different people in different economic situations around the world.

"The Transscalar Architecture of COVID-19 tracks how coronavirus, its contagion, and its responses are enacted through space," said the filmmakers.

"[The film] interrogates territorial divides, the condition of migration and the making of refugeeness, old and new geometries of colonialism, tax justice, access to healthcare, racism and xenophobia, warfare rhetoric, surveillance, urban infrastructures, public spaces, and borders. But also; entanglement, cooperation, inventiveness, engagement, and emerging forms of togetherness."

The World Around invited New York-based architect Jaque and curator Munuera to create the film as part of its Earth Day symposium, which we have been broadcasting all day as part of Virtual Design Festival.

Jaque is director of the Advanced Architectural Design Program at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture and Planning and Preservation. He is also the founder of the Office for Political Innovation. He collaborated on the film with New York-based scholar, critic, and curator Munuera.

The World Around invited all participants of Earth Day to nominate a charity. Andrés and Ivan propose donating to Housing Works, a healing community of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. Their mission is to end the dual crises of homelessness and AIDS through relentless advocacy, the provision of lifesaving services, and entrepreneurial businesses that sustain our efforts. Find out more at housingworks.org.

The film is the final part of Virtual Design Festival's collaboration with The World Around, which featured talks, presentations, films and essays by over twenty visionaries at the forefront of ecological design.

You can watch all the content on Virtual Design Festival at dezeen.com/vdf/the-world-around.

Credits:

The Transscalar Architecture of COVID-19
Duration: 12:57

Directors
Andrés Jaque and Ivan L. Munuera
With the Office for Political Innovation

Sound
Jorge López Conde with the special contribution of Clarice Jensen and her piece Metastable from her album The Experience of Repetition as Death

Research and production team
Rajvi Anandpara
Shubhankar Bhajekar
Drishti Gandhi
Roberto González García
Maria Karagianni
Meerati Rana
Saumil Sanghavi
Mishti Shah