Coronavirus: How the virus accelerates us into the future
From touchless lifts in office towers to extra bike lanes, the virus will force changes to our built environment, including where we live.
Ask some of the world’s leading architects what the legacy of the pandemic will be and they come up with one word: acceleration.
They agree that there will have to be changes to the way we live our lives, how our homes and offices are built, how we use cities and the transport that serves them. They also believe many of these changes would have happened anyway, given time; COVID-19 has taken us into the future much sooner than expected.
Norman Foster points to the Georgian terraces that make the centre of London such a desirable place to live. We do not think of them as a consequence of London’s Great Fire of 1666, but they were. Largely fireproof brick buildings replaced wooden ones.
“I can remember polio and tuberculosis and poor kids being placed inside iron lungs, the ventilators of the day,” Foster, 84, says. “Humanity has been here before, and normality will eventually prevail. I don’t think the future will be 2m apart. In reality, I don’t believe that the pandemic will really change anything, but it will seem as if it has. Working from home would have happened anyway, and a move towards healthier buildings and cities, towards decentralisation and autonomy — these trends will be hastened. So it will change everything, and nothing will change.”
It is a sentiment echoed by engineers, notably the deputy chairman of Arup, Tristram Carfrae. “Crises are a real catalyst,” he says, “because we give ourselves permission to adopt new habits and adopt them much more quickly.”
Yet in many ways the evolution of architecture is bound up with the history of disease, and outbreaks have brought rapid change to cities worldwide, from the cholera epidemics of the 1850s that led to London’s sewer system and the creation of the Albert and the Victoria embankments to house it, to the construction of Central Park in New York and the Emerald Necklace in Boston, largely due to tuberculosis.
And TB was also an influence on the modernist movement, which drew on the designs of the sanatoriums. Modernist architects quickly adopted the flat roofs, terraces and balconies used for sunbathing, along with the white-painted walls and large windows to maximise the light and fresh air. Le Corbusier, the movement’s Swiss doyen, dreamt of an aesthetic of hygiene. “There are no more dirty dark corners. Everything is shown as it is. Then comes inner cleanliness,” he wrote.
Outer cleanliness will certainly be designed-in from now on. There may be a return to the sleek, easily scoured furniture of the modernists – some of which was originally designed for sanatoriums, such as Alvar Aalto’s Paimio chair — but disinfecting equipment will be incorporated into homes and offices too.
The Italian architect and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Carlo Ratti has won plaudits for his scheme to convert old shipping containers into intensive care units. His latest idea is a lightweight fabric case that can be hung inside the cloakrooms of shops, restaurants and reception areas. It sterilises coats and other clothes using ozone, killing 98 per cent of micro-organisms, bacteria and viruses within an hour, after which the ozone is converted back into oxygen. “It’s not sustainable to wash clothes every day,” he says.
Kone, the Finnish lift manufacturer, is using ultraviolet light to kill virus particles, especially on escalator handrails, which are notorious sources of infection. Its latest DX Class lifts boast antibacterial and anti-scratch surfaces along with powerful air filters. It is also doing away with the need to touch buttons: users can summon the lift using their smartphones and use a holographic panel inside to tell the lift which floor to go to. When they arrive, facial-recognition technology will let them walk straight in. “All our customers are worried about liability,” says Tomio Pihkala, of Kone, “but without elevators cities cannot function, so adaptation is key.”
This touchless future is also being tested at 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London. Facial-recognition technology is already in use, and in the near future visitors may be screened for temperature, something Arup has trialled in Hong Kong. The key to using the building is an app on your smartphone that lets you control the area you work: increasing ventilation, operating blinds, ordering coffee. It can also work as a contact tracer. Karen Cook, an architect, says the pandemic will have an upside too: an increase in the space allotted to each worker, from about 8 sq m per person to something more like 14 sq m. “I’m not sure sterility is the key to getting people back to the office,” she says, “but generous spaces might be.”
Some are questioning the need to return to the office altogether, although the architectural firm Squire & Partners says the role of the office is about to change. Now that working from home has proved effective, offices can be used as clubhouses for events, brainstorming and even yoga. “Going to the office is going to be a special occasion,” Tim Gledstone says. “There will have to be room to think and breathe.”
Key to the breathing part is the sort of natural ventilation used at one of London’s most eco-friendly buildings, Bloomberg’s European headquarters, designed by Foster + Partners, hailed as a game-changer for wellness. There, large bronze fins suck in the breeze from the outside and circulate it through the floor plates and central atrium. “Natural ventilation brings real health benefits,” Foster says. “People are more alert and creative when they’re not being fed stale air.”
If the trend towards healthier buildings gathers momentum, it will also result in healthier and greener cities, Foster believes. A keen cyclist himself, he points out that 650km of bike lanes have been installed in Paris in a matter of weeks.
Ratti, meanwhile, predicts a boom in “micromobility”, with bike-hire schemes and ebikes becoming ubiquitous, as is increasingly the case in his home city of Milan, as well as staggered working hours. Certainly, he says, “we need to flatten the curve of transportation as much as the pandemic. We can’t have a rush hour any more.”
Carfrae, of Arup, agrees: “People would have to be wearing masks and snorkels to travel on a packed Tube,” he says. “Public transport is now a weak link.”
Interestingly, all three expect a move towards decentralisation. “Maybe we can return to village living. Or maybe it depends on what stage you are at in life. Maybe we leave cities for the young.”
Patrick Schumacher, the principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, would like to see vacant office space turned into co-living places for “young professionals with a start-up mentality”. There is plenty of scope for sharing communal facilities with a little original thinking.
So, what will the immediate future look like as the end of lockdown looms? Foster is confident that society will emerge stronger. “As an architect, you’re an optimist. You see the way a small change can have a big effect,” Foster says. “The science fiction of my youth is the reality of today. Will we soon be whisked away by a drone down green-grass highways? I can imagine it will happen before long. But we’ll need to remember and reward the people who really got us there – not architects, but nurses and doctors.”
The Times
More Coverage
Singer, muse, addict: a poster child of the 60s
Marianne Faithfull was convinced that when the 1960s ended, her life was effectively over. Her relationship with Mick Jagger had collapsed and she sank into a life of drug addiction, ending up on the streets – until a career revival.
Strongman Trump erodes US liberal instincts
President’s vengefulness was never in doubt but the institutional willingness to restrain him appears to be fading.