What Will Coronavirus Mean for Architecture?

Even if COVID-19 were to suddenly disappear tomorrow, it would still be one of this year’s biggest killers, according to The Economist. With over 365,000 people having lost their lives to the illness within the space of four short months, what does this mean for architecture and the built environment in general?

Will the landscape change? Will the concept of the home and the buildings they are housed in change? Architects may not be able to save the planet from environmental and health threats, but there’s certainly a part structural design can play in helping to keep us all safer and with a greater sense of security.

Will the virus have a negative impact on the profession?

First of all, like any significant challenge relating to human life, architecture will actually have a large part to play in providing solutions.

Let’s make no mistake about that – the profession will not ‘suffer’ in the same way that others will as a result of coronavirus and architects will be mobilised to play their part in defining the ‘new normal’.

It would, of course, be preferable for the architectural profession not to have such a widescale and horrific problem to deal with. Nevertheless, deal with it the profession will try to do, to whatever possible degree.

Whether it’s designing temporary facilities to respond to hospital bed shortages, hacking equipment using 3D printers to create oxygen mask valves, or rethinking our interactions with surface materials (i.e. more hands-free solutions), architects will be kept as busy as those looking to develop effective medication against the disease.

Public health will become a core focus of architecture

Population growth has presented many a challenge to architects over the centuries. Maintaining a sense of community in spite of the alienating factor of large groups of people; keeping people safe from the elements and from each other; trying to minimise our environmental impact in spite of our growing numbers; trying to give us a continued sense of high-quality living in ever smaller spaces…

Now, as COVID-19 causes untold damage to our various ways of life, architecture has a new overarching problem to solve: how to make sure all of the above is still considered while also minimising the spread of deadly disease. And that drills down into untold problematic minutiae of building design.

How can material and interior design product manufacturers, as well as architectural technologists impact on the spread of the disease, for instance?

Corian® producer DuPont™ is currently invested in developing new protective clothing made from Tyvek®, which has traditionally been used as a building wrap. But what about things like automated surface sanitising? Or standardised use of motion- and sound-activated home hardware, from lighting to ovens to taps? How can the profession increasingly minimise bodily contact with the stuff of life to limit the spread of the disease?

Redefining work and home concepts

The rapid and effective implementation of home working schemes across the globe showed companies and their employees that there is another way of working that very well limits chances of spreading COVID-19. Now, as we enter the ‘new normal’, architecture can both respond to and influence the direction of this approach.

Will it mean new configurations of living spaces that maximise green areas to allow us the sense of escaping the home without actually leaving?

Will it see a return to building garages in houses as more and more people stop using public transport in favour of isolated travel? Or, conversely, will the dramatic decrease in greenhouse gas emissions during lockdown force us to re-think our reliance on automobile usage altogether and will architects transform our cities into cyclist-only zones?

Will it mean more compartmentalised corporate bathrooms that increase our privacy and decrease our chance of contamination?

Will office corridors become wider?

Will commercial building rooftops be designed as drop-off zones for a new era of drone deliveries?

We don’t know exactly to what degree the built environment will be affected by our new approaches to work, but that it will be affected is without question.

Rebuilding community

Public spaces will change as a result of the spread of the new coronavirus, that’s for sure. The more socially isolated we become, the more importance opportunities to gather together will take on. Architecture will need to find solutions that allow isolation and community to co-exist in a strange new paradox.

More (openable, well ventilated) glass? More compartmentalised parks and recreation areas? Plazas built on multiple levels to discourage mass proximity? And how about in the home itself? Will social media become even more embedded in our home lives and will architecture have a part to play in that? Will we see shared virtual social spaces built into our living environments to give the illusion of proximity with those far away from us?

Just think about the average restaurant experience prior to the spread of coronavirus. All gathered together around a table, wandering around to talk to friends, chinking glasses in cheers. All this will change. There’ll be mandatory temperature control, social distancing built into seating design (bigger tables with fewer seats), disinfectant stations at entrances and in restrooms, maybe even more robot waiters!

Mobile phones will rule our lives even more

If you’re already feeling blue about the amount of time you spend staring at your phone, you might want to stop reading at this point. Because our reliance on these little handsets of social isolation is only going to increase.

We’ll control everything from the locks on our front doors and the temperature of our bath water to the ordering of food and switching on of the robot vacuum cleaner from our phones soon enough.

The technology already exists and is regularly used by the more upwardly mobile among us. Coronavirus, however, will bring the internet of things into everyday usage for a great many more of us purely as a matter of hygienic necessity.

It’s going to be a daunting few years ahead as medical science works at pace to find a solution to the spread of this devastating disease. In the meantime, all architecture can do is try to keep our lives feeling as ‘normal’ as possible whilst also keeping us as safe as possible. Which is no mean feat.

Pictured: "Keep Your Distance" football field designed by Accept & Proceed

East London-based Accept & Proceed' came out with a design proposal focused on reshaping amateur football pitches to allow for matches to restart. The idea is to place colourful marking on the pitch to highlight the area that each player can occupy so they do not come in contact with each other.