How homes might look post Covid-19?
Text: Des. Kunica Khosla, Founder, Kunica Interiors, Mumbai
The Covid-19 pandemic has led companies to give up on their office spaces and manage their teams working from home, while children attend schools online and family events are held over video-conferencing applications. Those who had never believed in online meetings and never used video-calling software no rely on these to complete daily task calls and hold client meetings. In such a scenario, a home must now have a well-designed workspace.
Today, people have converted their dining room tables as makeshift workstations. However, work from home remains a long-term strategy and it depletes the boundaries between professional and personal lives. Interior designers now look at solutions that are comfortable enough to be spent with family, attend official calls and manage a work-life balance. The Australia-based architecture firm Woods Bagot has invented an AD-APT system that utilises adjustable walls and screens to divide an open-plan apartment into dedicated spaces. Also, the Brazilian architect, Igor Leal’s ‘buried studio’ concept that has a workplace designed into the front garden of a residence, gives a feeling of outside freshness.
Hygiene, health and safety are integrated into our homes as well due to the rise in handwashing and sanitisers. Interior designers predict that residences will have entryways that defined zones where people remove their shoes, leave things outside and sanitise themselves before entering. Home automation and connected devices will be more common to order groceries online, and the kitchens will see voice-activated appliances, smart systems that place orders without manual intervention and dedicated spaced for hygienic storage. As we see the ‘new normal’ evolving, interior designers and innovation to achieve consumer expectations that converge at comfort, hygiene and space.
