Home + Office — New living concepts
This text is a contribution to contagious-cities as part of a KISD Workshop with the topic “Performance & Contagion”.
Like our values and habits will change with the COVID-19 pandemic, so will our homes. People will overthink the current living concepts under the novel conditions self-isolation brings with it. The high rise buildings in cities which accommodate many people are lacking in hygiene and health standards. Surfaces which need to be used publicly, like elevator buttons, can be contaminated with harmful organisms for days. Door handles have to be touched by hand. And of course, the neighbors represent a high risk of getting infected.
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The architect Sergey Makhno is sure, changes in our homes will be enormous in the future. Above all, the concept of an open-plan space will not fit in an alerted behavior in terms of hygiene. It is more likely, to have separated rooms with an extra entrance area, to allow us to leave shoes and clothes after entering the house. This thought could be built even further with having a cleaning room featuring antiseptic dispensers or even ultraviolet radiation lamps which can kill some harmful organisms.
Also, the workspaces at home will change from desks in the corner of the living room to a separate room. This room needs large windows and comfortable furniture as well as advanced technical equipment. Since private and working time will overlap for everyone, it could be a big advantage to have the workspace sound-insulated. As a response also offices need to adapt and add higher standards to animate their employees to come to work there.
At least for the door handles two architects have created a fast 3D-print solution. Ivo Tedbury and Freddie Hong published a door handle extension concept which makes it possible to open the door with your arm instead of your hand. And in China, the demand for “no-touch” holographic buttons, mainly for elevators, increased.
Sources
Sergey Makhno, “Life after coronavirus: how will the pandemic affect our homes?”, in Dezeen Magazine, 25.03.2020, https://www.dezeen.com/2020/03/25/life-after-coronavirus-impact-homes-design-architecture/ [March, 28, 2020]
Shelly Banjo, Livia Yap, Colum Murphy, and Vinicy Chan, “Coronavirus Forces World’s Largest Work-From-Home Experiment”, in Bloomberg/Technology, 02.02.2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-02/coronavirus-forces-world-s-largest-work-from-home-experiment [March, 28, 2020]
