How will Covid affect the built environment?
How will the COVID-19 affect the built environment? Architects Ponni Concessao and Oscar Concessao, Chennai, take a closer look.
Throughout history, how we design and inhabit physical space has been a primary defense against epidemics. Space, as it relates to infectious disease epidemics, isn’t just about quarantine; it’s also a design problem. The design of quarantine spaces can be divided into two specific areas, one is converting existing facilities such as hotels, hostels, convention centers, shopping malls, and sports arenas into spaces for individual and mass treatments.
Build pop-up facilities
One can create pop-up facilities such as tents outside hospitals as triage areas to quickly determine who is sick and needs to be admitted or who can go home. Tents can be put up with plumbing and medical needs with other medical facilities. Parking areas in front of large hospitals can operate as preliminary vetting stations. Healthcare workers can perform quick evaluations based on the degree of infections. It is best to keep patients out of the emergency departments. Spaces also need easily cleanable surfaces, ventilation that won’t spread through contagious aerosols, and, for psychosocial purposes, television or internet access to keep people occupied. If you’re going to put a person in a room for two weeks, it’s more than just monitoring their health.
Provide clean, sanitary spaces
Modernist architects believed that clean and sanitary spaces were essential for treating illness. For example, tuberculosis was treated by isolating patients and giving them access to sunlight and fresh, dry air. Hallmarks of modernist sanatorium design, which experienced a surge in the 1920s and 1930s, included large windows, balconies, flat surfaces that wouldn’t collect dust, and white paint, which offered the appearance of cleanliness and made smudges visible. We could use technology in addressing the need for quarantine and isolation to slow the spread of epidemics. In terms of keeping people isolated, a smart home can read your temperature as it knows you can’t go out into the shared parts of an apartment building.
Reimagine workspaces
Open office spaces are among the worst for COVID-19, particularly if they are sealed office spaces without open ventilation and the air is just re-circulated within the building. That’s because, like with other communicable airborne illnesses, COVID-19 is spread by coughing, sneezing, or talking as the virus travels through respiratory droplets. Current data suggest that the virus may also survive on surfaces for several hours, if not days, but we do not know that conclusively yet. To reduce the risk of spreading infection, concerned companies should enforce work from home policies to keep the contagion down.
And, yet, in India, we have always been suspicious of open-plan offices. We have always looked for that one window or balcony that could let some natural light and air stream in. A Harvard Business School study of open workspaces and its effect on human collaboration conducted two years ago found that open offices reduce person-to-person interaction by nearly 70 per cent. The study shows why open plans make everyone feel more observed or transparent while there is an inherent need for privacy among human beings. Productivity is considerably reduced and the idea of a “collective intelligence” never works. It’s like dining at a large table.
The idea of “less is more” comes into full force as office design takes a 180-degree turn. Don’t sit too close to one another, work in shifts and opt for virtual meetings: this is the advice in a recent video by the World Health Organization for offices.
No-Touch Policy
Designers will increasingly call on antibacterial fabrics and finishes, including those that already exist, like copper, and those that will inevitably be developed. Within hotels, there could be self-cleaning bathrooms as well as pod rooms, smaller modular spaces that can be sealed off from other guests while also offering the ability to be quickly torn down and disinfected. Certain construction elements already standard in health care may find application in other public spaces, such as reducing the number of flat surfaces where germs can sit, and installing ventilation systems that allow for removing potentially contaminated air from any given area.
Anyone designing for public or retail spaces might consider crowd control and the spread of germs daily. In designs, we need to seek out materials that are easy to maintain, resist mold growth and promote good indoor air quality. No VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) paint, paying close attention to moisture and flooring and specifying better filters and HVAC equipment help a lot. Proper maintenance and commissioning are also important, as the management of ventilation, filtration, and humidity in a building contributes to people’s health. We need to incorporate materials that are resistant to viruses or bacteria living on surfaces, design strategies can change exponentially for future works and also could spark new ideas in these fields. Also, we could foresee design elements like automatic doors that open and shut without people touching them become standard or even required by building codes.
Redesigning homes
More attention will be given to the arrangement of the workplace at home. The spatial organization will change, with the place to work at home no longer a desk with a parody of an office chair and a lamp, slotted somewhere in the corner of the living room or under the stairs. Now it will be a completely separate room with large windows, blackout curtains, and comfortable furniture. Over the past decade, digital technology has already transformed homes into live/workspaces where, over a day, people assume a variety of personal and professional roles.
In planning for the future, we expect that climate change and environmental degradation will increase with each passing year and we, as architects, understand how to address these known certainties. But no one predicted that a global health crisis would upend our lives, fundamentally shift how we live in our homes, and impact the future of residential design. This pandemic serves to remind us how important our houses are to our daily well-being.
In the short term, as the outside world becomes less touchable, I can see a great desire for the materials, textures, and objects within our homes to have more of a tactile quality that invites us to use them. As the access to the outdoors becomes more limited, I can see people getting more creative and interested in ways to bring the outside in, possibly re-imagining their living spaces as indoor gardens and landscapes. People think sustainability is a new thing, but traditional cultures have always operated this way, in terms of economy. We’re doing more with less. It’s ‘frugal chic’.
Changes, going forward
First, the number of transportation adaptations will be crucial. There will need to be steps to reduce crowding and delay. Painted lines on floors and stanchions can promote adequate social distancing in waiting areas, as well as making masks and hand sanitizers available. Airlines will need to reduce their passenger counts and keep middle seats open. Airports not only connect cities and enable the flow of people and goods across the world; they are key drivers of urban economies. They cannot be idled indefinitely.
Second, we need strategies for altering how we use other forms of large-scale infrastructure – stadiums, arenas, convention centers, performing arts centers, universities, and schools. Because they bring together large groups of people, all of them will pose risks until the virus is stamped out. City leaders must act to pandemic-proof these assets as much as possible. Class sizes may need to be reduced in schools and audience sizes reduced in theaters, with many seats left open. Masks may need to be required and made available to patrons as needed, and temperature checks carried out. The sooner such large-scale civic infrastructure can be safely reopened, the faster our urban economies will rebound.
Third, we need strong and proactive steps to protect the core of our local economies. Some projections suggest that as many as three-quarters of barbershops, restaurants, mom-and-pop stores, and the like will be bankrupted before the first wave of the pandemic is over. In the short run, it is imperative that our small businesses, which generate so many jobs and lend our communities so much of their character, survive. They need whatever support they can get, in the form of mortgage, rent, and tax relief; zero-interest loans; and more. In the interim, cities need to provide assistance and advice to help prepare these vital small businesses to reopen safely.
The creative economy of art galleries, museums, theaters, and music venues, along with the artists, musicians, and actors who fuel them, is also at dire risk. Cities must partner with other levels of government, the private sector and philanthropies to marshal the funding and expertise that is needed to keep their cultural scenes alive. Once they are allowed to reopen, they will also need to make interim and long-term changes in the way that they operate. Cities should mobilize to provide advice and assistance on the necessary procedures, from temperature screenings, better spacing for social distancing and the like, for these venues to reopen safely.
Taking urban farming global
Quarantine is perhaps the best time to get to know more about indoor gardens – how to grow plants from seeds and create a food ration, even if you live in a multi-story building. In addition to producing food, indoor gardens can provide oxygen. The trend in phytowalls has been around for many years, but we have not explored the full potential it offers for interior design.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. In the not-too-distant future, the pandemic will end and our cities will return to something approximating normal. What we do over the next 12 to 18 months can ensure that our city and metro economies get up and running again while protecting themselves against similar scenarios in the future. This is a time when our cities and their leaders can and must show the way forward.
