Architecture will drastically change in the future, specifically in the next ten years post-COVID vaccine. With new revolutionizing ways we use and see space to meet everyday demands. Currently, the COVID vaccine’s finally coming into play in the fight against the virus even in some states they have reduced their restrictions on mask mandates and social distancing. According to a recent NBC Chicago report on Illinois’s current mandate Governor J.B Pritzker has given the executive order that “there are only two locations the state is requiring you to wear a mask indoors: Inside of health care settings, like doctors offices, nursing homes, and hospitals Inside of congregate facilities, such as correctional facilities, jails, prisons, and homeless shelters. While those are the only two settings the state requires wearing masks indoors, school districts and private businesses can continue to require mask-wearing at their discretion”(Illinois Mask Mandate: Do You Still Need to Wear a Mask in Certain Places? Here’s What to Know). In many parts of the United States, things have gone back to almost normal with people talking, laughing, and freeing themselves as they did before COVID, but also conscious that although the vaccine has been submitted; not everything is a hundred percent safe. This current societal state of anxiety drives architects into a more social order that works by meeting societal demands created by new norms to solve problems in our change in lifestyle and environment. Although COVID thought it stopped life from continuing, the curious young architect stayed at home questioning how can our architecture and space innovate to positively impact our daily lives in our new post-COVID vaccine norm?
Architecture is constantly evolving to meet societal demands that will update our society into the newest modernized life that can serve its purpose to function for its daily consumers. Especially in wealthy western capitalist cultures such as the United States, “the relationship between the landscape, environment, and technology will change our vision that we are not citizens and we are Argonauts and we will need to optimize where we are’’ (Architecture Will Change Completely in The Next Ten Years). Although the world has been affected by a pandemic this does not stop architecture from evolving and adds to the list of things that need to be designed better to fit with current demands. With the slow decline of COVID, new architecture plans will begin to be designed to focus on creating spaces that are multipurpose, open, sustainable, and eco-friendly. For example, in 2021 the National Post, which is a Canadian-based newspaper, talks about the current housing challenges Canada is facing during their presidential election. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the housing committee has planned to regulate, design, and install garden suites to decrease the size of homes. Architects are rethinking single-family home sizes, condo heights, and amenities to meet changing demands caused by the pandemic. People want more access to nature within their homes and daily life which is one part of the five key trends that will arise in 2022. Small will be big Meg Graham and Andre D’Elia principals at the Toronto architecture practice Superkul is, “that they don’t need as many square feet or as much stuff to live well ” (A 2021 Moment in Architecture That May Define the Future Quality). Over quantity, because of the pandemic, the idea of less is more has been an ethos for many Canadians who enquired about many projects for tiny homes which has increased by 55% across Canada in 2019 according to the trend monitoring software firm Semrush. With the high demand for “smaller, but better quality houses are now preferred,” said Graham and D’elia, the demand for more nature and reducing urban spaces to incorporate direct personal access to fresher air and greener cities. As for single-family homes, they will maximize natural light, and create larger back yards and multiple access points from indoors to outdoors through the creation of terraces, balconies, and roof decks. With multi-unit buildings architects plan on creating larger balconies and expanding outdoor common areas these design accesses to the outdoors will become a main priority for architects in Canada. Alternative models will gain steam in 2021 low rise competes with high due to the pandemic people aren’t attracted to condo dwelling their goal is to create a functional, dynamic and welcoming environment. This shows how architecture is already changing our future and making it a reality with new urban innovations that take care of other issues such as climate change and the economic crisis.
Architects place the balance and equality of form and function through the reduction of unnecessary and a clear path towards cleanliness and use. Fran Silvestre, a Spanish educator, and architect see that “architecture is more than buildings. We build an identity for the people who live and work in our designs where people’s desires become reality. Sometimes you can change the life of a person just by a design” (Architecture Will Change Completely in The Next Ten Years). Architecture adapts to the environment around it and grows as we, humans, do so that it can serve its built purpose by meeting the daily needs of the modern person. In the next ten years, our architecture will pave the way for new uses of spaces with more focus placed on taking care of our needs for a healthy and cleaner future. The future of an Architect will also adapt and become a career that is more than just building buildings, but a compromise between two distinctly similar, or dissimilar notions. Now in the meta age architects need to find ways to connect with humans whether it’d be physical or digital so that it has a reason to exist. Architecture needs to be able to speak to both the tourist and purist which is done successfully with ready-made new ideas based on recognizable parts that touch on many parts such as functionality, human emotion, and irony. Architects need to change towards a service profession that doesn’t focus on isolation, but across disciplinary boundaries, approaching projects not just problems to be solved by building, but social problems and other holistic needs. We need an architecture that is sustainable, flexible, adaptive, responsive, and local without being parochial. We also need an architecture that is cosmopolitan and smart, engaged and connected. The pandemic is seen as a spatial problem and everywhere we go we leave traces of microbes which, “are tiny living things that are responsible for diseases such as toxoplasmosis and malaria” (What Are Microbes?). Absolute cleanliness wouldn’t be as satisfying since microbes move through space. The pandemic and its problems are as inescapable as space or life. This isn’t the only issue that has risen, but it’s followed by climate change and also an economic crisis. Architects shouldn’t focus on fixing one issue but on creative solutions that fix multiple problems at once. Some architects see buildings as machines that first are the latest and do things well, but later end up becoming obsolete and unloved. After some decades though this idea of the machine is replaced with a building being a living organism and this creates a vision of the organic world. The problem isn’t ambition about how the world should be, but what a building should be. they need an idea that’s not surrounded by things but beings that aren’t isolated. Though this virus is giving our world a lesson and architecture is what conjoins this new free wisdom.
Therefore, Covid 19 has forcefully altered our living conditions before and after the quarantine period which has caused us to repurpose home interiors into rooms multipurpose to continue our daily tasks. With the acceleration of people who are transitioning to live their lives online, the bedroom has transitioned into a place of work and play. The Vitra Sumit is a panel where creatives and innovators from all over the world come together to discuss, propose, and solve solutions to the world’s everyday problems. This panel was held online due to the pandemic and the topic was how quarantine has pushed residential interiors into spaces of multipurpose. Virgil Abloh, an Illinois native, designer, and architect spoke at the Vitra Sumit in 2020 after a recent collaboration with Ikea. Abloh spoke about a vision of a young adult’s domestic space which highlights a minimal up-and-go lifestyle that revolves around the essentials. It’s a sustainable lifestyle that encourages the individual to reuse furniture since the object will become vintage which will hold sentimental value and appreciation for the good old time. Younger adults now have minimized their domestic space and have reduced their usage of furniture which has now created a more selective materialistic lifestyle that sways towards emotional and social resonance. Interior designs are becoming increasingly digitized which means that originality will be more important than ever because social media will influence new designs and aesthetics that are not only marketable for their trendy aesthetic but also serve a purpose for the customer. “ In the decade that followed, technology loosened the industry’s laces as online services and apps increased transparency, made affordable online design services a reality, and inspired manufacturers to sell directly to consumers. These changes thrilled many homeowners but sent design’s gatekeepers into a panic”(Emerging Technology Trends Tha,t Will Help Shape the Future of Architecture). Afterquarantininge the anxieties of COVID expanded our distance from one another which has created bubbles around the individual making people want to stay as far away from each other as possible. Many things were being placed at a distance from each other which isolates objects into single subjects with uses of minimalism and exclusivity to create a cleanly ordered space. With people wanting to be farther from each other I see that this anxiety will take hold of our design and create places where the congregation will become taboo like a person openly smoking cigarettes. I see our architecture turning into a space where it serves more than one purpose and can house enough area for the mind and thought to flow freely without feeling congested physically and mentally it, “creates spaces in which the interior and the exterior flow into one another, to dematerialize buildings from stone and steel to something more fluid, dynamite, andparablee’’ (The Pandemic Has Shown Us What the Future of Architecture Could Be). This vision of a post-vaccine future could be the means when consumers could very well cut new products out of their lives and revive the ode to vintage.
On the whole, architecture is not what it used to be and now The new modern architecture student has “more information now compared to the past. But this is not good in every case. There was less information but it had more quality. Now you have a lot of information and you do not know if it is good or bad. What happens is that the good students are better students but the average students are worse compared to the past” (Architecture Will Change Completely in the Next Ten Years). This can make the career a studious and treacherous journey, but with cities becoming more compact there becomes a limitation to architecture so we instead expand to greater spaces such as the countryside. Globalization and COVID have pushed the fundamental architectural innovation process to continue accelerating changes in our space forcing “architects to confront new challenges and face new responsibilities. Some are now designing buildings with a view to social distancing and the possibility of future pandemics” (The Future of Architecture in an Ever-Changing World). The future of architecture will be a hope for the organized capability of the socially democratic welfare state with the movement stepping away from a capitalist culture into a more social order that works for everyone
Reference
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“Illinois Mask Mandate: Do You Still Need to Wear a Mask in Certain Places? Here’s What to Know.” NBC Chicago, NBC Chicago, 29 Apr. 2022, https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/illinois-mask-mandate-do-you-need-to-wear-a-mask-anywhere-in-the-state-heres-what-to-know/2820191/.
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