2020. Pandemic reflections.

If foresight had been a thing, I might have stockpiled tins of beans instead of spending my New Year’s Eve welcoming in 2020 with such ignorant glee.

So far, the pandemic has had devastating and far-reaching consequences, impacting both our personal relationships and our spatial practices. As a result, designers and engineers are now being faced with challenges resulting from dramatic changes in how we engage with our environment. It is not the first-time disease has made us question our notions of space and place. Public health and the built environment share a close relationship which affects the way we occupy and dwell in spaces. Historically, disease has been a direct factor in architectural progression.

In his book ‘Building and Dwelling; Ethics for the City,’ the sociologist Richard Sennett discusses how the French language originally used two different words to distinguish between two concepts of the city by using two different words. The first word ‘Ville’ denotes the built, physical forms. The second word, ‘Cité’ denotes the spatial perceptions embodied within the built forms, the behaviours, mentalities, and beliefs. The pandemic poses challenges around both of these understandings of space and as a result, it has made us question and re-interpret the role and relationship between the two distinctions.  

Early on in the pandemic, questions arose asking if the coronavirus outbreak may be ‘the death of the office’. Designers from across the spectrum were keen to offer their input into how previous workspaces were no longer fit for purpose.  Questions regarding the pandemics impact were not confined to the commercial sphere either; data on house prices suggested a newfound preference for houses with gardens, easy access to countryside or quality green spaces. This trend in housing preferences meant London house prices took a substantial fall as a result.

The pandemic has shifted our spatial desires. The impact of lockdown has made conscious the consequences of a monotonous environment and made apparent the role our spaces play in nourishing the mind. The negative psychological effects brought about by an environment devoid of adequate stimulation, especially in developing brains, has been well documented over the last 50 years. Peter Smith, author of ‘syntax and the city’, explains that the solution to mitigating the psychological impacts of spatial monotony is not a simple fix. Visual complexity and ambiguity isn’t enough to adequately stimulate the mind, we also need the sub-conscious structures and experiences that are encompassed by the built forms. That is to say, our brains require more than just the experience of the objective Ville, but also the subjective complexities of the Cité.

Natural environments seem to provide for this complex visceral need for mental nourishment in a way that built forms alone cannot. An understanding of how we depend on our environment for stimulation and look towards it as a facilitator to our social structures may explain our gravitation towards green spaces through the pandemic.

Unfortunately, our neglect of creating properly funded, designed, and engineered green spaces within the built environment meant that our sudden influx of spatial dependency on our publicly available green spaces resulted in unprecedented pressures on spatial capacity. Whether we chose Clapham Common or a National Trust, it was easy to see how this planning-based neglect had manifested itself to our own detriment during a time when we turned to green spaces as a way of managing our own wellbeing.

Our shift in spatial desires is not due solely to the pandemic as the foundations for change were being already laid. For example, companies such as WeWorks, are providing shared spaces for the public to work in. In doing so challenging the way we use offices and cultural attitudes around how we work. This tilts the current concept of what an office is towards a more transient and dynamic space. This ongoing conceptual shift begins to decompartmentalise the spaces which we work in, fragmenting the static office structure. In doing so it allows the capital associated with working environments to become mobilised. This mobilisation of capital will have a spatial manifestation within our built environment. For example, we may find new areas of the city competing for spatial occupiers in ways they have previously not been able to. Perhaps instead of city centre warehouse offices, we will shift toward more localised working-hubs with shared dynamic workspaces thereby creating a more flexible and responsive work environment.

The benefits of spatial competition could be wide-ranging. For example, reducing the need for travel, would elevate the pressures on existing infrastructure which means funding can be redirected to other, greener assets with larger social and cultural capital. In doing so this would create a more reactive, resilient, and responsible urbanism.

The spatial effects of the pandemic will have a radical impact on how we dwell within our environments. As future architects this poses a professional challenge and, therefore, an opportunity to reflect upon our processes of design. We have a social responsibility towards ensuring we equip ourselves with the tools to create environments that work for the need of all people, especially those underrepresented within the urban decision-making processes. During the pandemic, figures showed that low-income earners are less likely to self-isolate if they are required to do so. This observation arises from a spatial reality of inadequate private spaces, crowded conditions, and a lack of access to decent public spaces. As future architects, we must learn from the spatial failings that have determined these architectural conditions and take responsibility for the holistic impacts of our practice.  

The pandemic has made apparent the role green spaces, quality landscape and environmental planning have on our relationships with, and reliance on, the built environment. This dependency means that the future architects, engineers, planners and alike have a social responsibility to ensure that we design progressive and resilient future environments.