Bunker: a modern history of spaces for protection and seclusion

During the pandemic --when shelter in place became the new normal -- isolation gained an entire new meaning, and spaces for quarantine and reclusiveness attained increased visibility and popularity. Nevertheless, designing specific protective spaces through seclusion has been a widely disseminated modern strategy as part of military and sanitary actions. In this essay, I uncover the history behind such spaces, focusing particularly on the design of bunkers.

Originally, bunkers were built as shelter and protection. Bunker-types were widely used during WWI, and these types of spaces served different uses over the years. Although traditionally known as insalubrious underground spaces, this essay shows how bunkers evolved. Today they are no longer necessarily buried or hidden, and serve a variety of functions, depending on context and historical moment.

This article reflects on the different forms and uses of bunkers historically, and how each iteration of this type of space portrays the values and social disputes of their time. Responding to the exercise proposed by sociologist Raymond Williams in his seminal book Keywords (1976), this research seeks to revisit the “bunker” and its various meanings today, reflecting on the conditions of these spaces of confinement, but most of all, in the conditions that necessitated the creation of these spaces in the first place.