Life After the Spread
In the era of Covid-19, we as designers have now hit a crosswords in conjunction to form and function. Now that we all have lived through a transformational moment, it is time that we now recognize that older tropes may now be dismantled. Modernism brought the promises to reinvent the world as we know it. The issue didn’t lie with modernist ambition to achieve this goal, but it was that very picturesque image of what the buildings should be in an age of technology and machinery. As we can now see, pandemics are a spatial problem and some buildings have now lost there original function and intended uses. Can the architecture within the world we know along with the built environment become more organic after all of this? Should we stress the importance of form more to help us think conceptually about the notion of space? Procedural thinking might have been hindering us, at least up until now.
We after all as designers are delivering a service to the people, and help inform their environments they inhabit. Maybe we to a degree are to blame for those who have now lost touch at what the built environment is supposed to do. We as designers have to begin reasoning and thinking more holistically as social issues and problems are at its highest peak it has been in generations. We know the pandemic will end, but where will architecture move after this? What are the take-aways? Every solution can’t be solved with curtain walls, concrete concrete and more concrete. We have to align our architectural values to be more engaged and connected as ever, coupled with the added notions of spaces and the built environment being adaptable to social change, political change, and economic change within society. What will life soon look like? The architecture has to be able to re-act to the times, if not, it may get left with the times.
An example to illustrate this with is with the design done in 2011 in Rwanda, Butaro District Hospital, which was designed to use relatively low-tech means and other sustainable uses. Some included the use of external corridors increased natural ventilation, higher ceilings, along with low-speed fans. All done in part to minimize the transmission of airborne diseases.
You mentioned that "pandemics are a spatial problem and some buildings have now lost there original function and intended uses" and then followed shortly after with stating that it is the duty of the architect to deliver a service to the people. Being the responsibility of the architect to help inform the built environment in a way to allow for inhabitation, I think you brought up some great points. I agree with you in this sense that the pandemic has definitely brought some challenges to all of the existing structures that are now impossible to occupy in the same way. Although this is a time in our lives that no one was able to anticipate, it makes me wonder if maybe the spaces that are unable to adapt to the pandemic of social distancing are actually the most unsuccessful spaces. As an architect with responsibility to design for the people, I think that it is crucial to understand how a building is able to serve for the modern day but also for the inevitable future. Obviously we cannot predict everything, but surely with the range of how buildings have adapted with the times there is a greater emphasis on the ones that were designed with better adaptability.
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