While the Covid-19 emergency has launched a widespread debate about the role of architecture, it is not the only health crisis to have impacted the 20th and 21st centuries. A survey of the leading Italian architectural magazines was performed to better understand how the design culture treated past pandemics, such as the Asian, Hong Kong, and Swine influenzas. Although the review did not reveal explicit reflections, some design constants in the planning of the city emerged cyclically in the background. This paper shows how, thanks to the debate on Covid-19, an incubation process that began a century ago is being completed, allowing only today the clarification of the media function of architecture in the construction of a critical awareness towards the pandemic phenomenon.