Separated by a five-minute walk down York Street, the enclaves of medicine and architecture sit quarantined. These worlds remain isolated, save for the medical buildings by Robert Venturi and Frank Gehry that will never be visited by architecture students. Yet the connection between disease-vectors and Illustrator vectors couldn’t be more intertwined.

This landscape of health and wellness is both physical and immaterial, somatic and psychological, political and borderless. As architects and designers, our fingerprints are all over the built environment and milieu in which public and private health can thrive or fail.

From cell to city, this issue of Paprika! puts the issues of health and wellness in architecture under the microscope. We have invited participants to examine the behemoth multibillion-dollar hospital construction industry, the design of communities with access to nutrition and medical care, mental health and the city, inclusive design standards, medical devices, and more.