Digesting Architecture

UPDATE 08.08.2020: On 6 August, the BBC posted "This is what coronavirus will do to our offices and homes." The article makes staggering predictions of how home and work will look for those who lived in large cities when COVID-19 shut the world down. Follow Laila in 2025 and see how her adaptive workspaces, home office, and living quarters have changed in the 5 years since coronavirus spread into a global pandemic. Their analysis closeley parallels mine in the following post, originally written 06.27.2020.

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Throughout history, all societies have adapted to, or been overcome by, disease. In the late 19th century, the United States followed the European modelling for “clean air” spaces, air shafts in buildings, high windows, doors with plenty of ventilation, and more. Lovers of this fin de siecle architecture have to look no further than disease for the reason why Venetian sewers and Swiss sanitariums like Davos are the way they are; common wisdom while tuberculosis ravaged the developed world required a way to “clear the air” of contagion (hence the idiom) to allow patients to recover. How, in this new age of pandemic, will architecture again evolve?

Clean air designs of the 19th century have now given way to social distancing and face masks. COVID-19 renders the air around us inherently dangerous to our health, so we have found ways to protect ourselves just as our predecessors found ways to protect themselves from tuberculosis. Maintaining 6 feet of space between yourself and other humans is fundamentally altering the way we, as a species, occupy space. Temporary markings with duct tape on the floors of supermarkets and plexiglass barriers will, in time, give way to more permanent shifts made mandatory in every new construction. The only question yet to be answered is how this evolution will manifest.

Now is the time to speak with architects and designers regarding pandemic design. If you’re uncomfortable with strangers in your home to take measurements, there are companies offering 3D interior modelling, scans for which are created by workers in full PPE. Most in-demand are the professionals who work along and don’t employ large crews/groups that would have multiple points of exposure to COVID-19, and understandably so. 

​Contact with strangers increases your possibility of infection, hence why big box stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot are packed to the gills on weekends. Homeowners have taken to DIY-ing many improvements to their home. Many are finding that the open floor plan we all yearned for is impractical for multiple persons occupying the same space, just as an open office concept became the bane of the cubicle warrior. Some are only the battery on their noise-canceling headphones away from filicide. Without discretionary spending now going towards travel, vacations, gas, car insurance, etc., for most, the home renovation and remodeling market is hotter than ever. No one has gone through lockdown without cleaning out every closet and calculating the best plan, affordable or not, for their family to coexist.

With the modern home now multitasking as a school, playground, 3-squares-a-day restaurant, office (for more than one party), workshop, laboratory, etc., what changes? Want to put in a pool? Get on the waiting list. Looking at that back deck? Yep, your rotted 4x4’s are not salvageable and you need to completely replace the deck. Good luck getting in a professional’s project book; they are struggling just as much as you to find a reliable source of materials.

​It’s not uncommon to find more than a dozen 2x4’s at Lowe’s or Home Depot these days. What are people building with all this lumber? Fencing. Planter beds. Boxes. Catios. They’re screening in their porches. French doors are going in. They’re finally getting around to all of the things that are easy to ignore when we’re only at home to sleep. Now that work, school, and play time all take place at the house, homeowners are making the most out of their properties. 

A New Generation of Builders

As COVID-19 continues to blaze through the United States, we will come to rely on our architecture to provide us with levels of defense against biological forces. New construction which confines people into disease-spreading conditions cannot be done ethically. For the discerning (read: wealthy) homeowner, it’s not too far off (and has certainly been accelerated by this year’s events) that the same companies utilizing the Internet Of Everything will utilize that same level of internal home monitoring for preventative measures like temperature checks using thermal imaging. Think Star Trek’s ship scanners. If Amazon’s delivery drone project catches on, then it’s not so strange to think that, instead of a Victorian-era coal chute on every house facing streets for delivery, there could be a “drone dropbox.” How many people use their chimneys anyway now that we’re experiencing climate change? Christmas 2016 in North Carolina was 81* at 9am. Bezos needs the chimney more than Santa.

The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal for June 13-14 2020 published Christopher Mims’ article “The New Germ Warfare.” The feature photo shows a woman in business casual attire standing with her arms held slightly away from her body underneath an unassuming white, square arch, named in the caption as “The Cleanse Portal.” Mims goes on to explain how, while UV light is damaging to humans, high-frequency UV light known as “far-UVC light” may have massive potential as a sanitizing technology of both skin and clothes. This “Cleanse Portal,” appearing no more intimidating than a TSA scanner, might very well hold keys to our fight against restoring life to a semblance of normal in the wake of COVID-19.

​While more futuristic than the architecture of Davos Sanitarium, far-UVC light and other nonintrusive sanitizing technologies are going to be the future of construction in the developed world. Ask yourself: would you prefer to continue wiping and spraying everything you own with disinfectant every time you get back to the house, or would you rather stand in a Cleanse Portal for a few minutes and let science do the work for you? A Cleanse Portal at every point of entrance or egress from every building in the developed world will be a massive step towards evolving the way we occupy space in the age of viral pandemics. 

What Does This Mean for Me?

​If the Cleanse Portal raises the hair on the back of your neck the same way Netflix original Black Mirror does, you’re not alone. Continuing automation and reliance on “smart” technology has been, and always will be, a constant point of contention between people; just look at 2004’s film I, Robot. Sixteen years later, we’re still collectively unsure how we feel about turning over more and more aspects of daily life to automation. Some people are thrilled at the prospect of menial chores being done by mindless automatons, while others see “smart technology” as a danger to personal liberty and privacy. 

​However, in the face of these advances becoming the difference between American COVID-19 cases continuing their embarrassingly colossal upswing or our finally controlling its spread, we will need to reach a compromise between our self-preservative instincts and the need for progress to contain this deadly virus. Reliance on these advanced medical technologies and integrating them into buildings, both commercial and residential, is the way forward. 

​Evolutions in architecture and building standards are inevitable. It may be a few years or a few decades, but in this inescapable age of pandemics, we are going to continue to progress towards pandemic-quashing building standards and options. Centuries ago, that looked like high windows and better circulation. Now, it looks like drone drop-off chimneys and sanitizing lights. It’s not what I pictured either.

Takeaways

​As long as humans have been living packed in close to one another, we’ve had to deal with the spread of illness. Evolving technologies and infrastructure have progressed the developed world to a point where we no longer worry about severe contagious diseases outside of the seasonal flu, or perhaps pneumonia or strep throat in a particularly nasty season. However, months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we are being forced to reckon with the notion that our current systems are not sufficient for a bug like COVID-19. 

​When TB blazed through the developed world, we adapted by changing the way we built our cities and infrastructure. As COVID-19 continues its unmitigated path through America, we will continue to adapt in ways that will permit us to live comfortably in a new normal. Whether our future is Cleanse Portals or some insofar undiscovered breakthrough, we must acknowledge a certain inevitable truth: we must rely on these advances and adaptive technologies. If we don’t begin working anti-COVID-19 technologies and designs into buildings, schools, offices, homes, etc., Americans will find ourselves constantly defeated by this virus. The age of pandemics has cemented this into human history with remarkable security. Necessity is the mother of invention. I, for one, look forward to meeting her offspring.