Architectural Design in a Post-COVID World
When a pandemic hits, it’s no surprise that people’s way of life changes with it. You try to say farther away from other people, wear your mask out in public, and scrub your hands with hand sanitizer much more often. What might surprise many, however, is that a pandemic can impact the way buildings are designed. In the early 20th century, for example, tuberculosis inspired architects to design buildings with elements that could help people recover from it.
The new designs they incorporated, such as light-colored rooms and expansive windows across long walls, ended up becoming mainstays in architectural design as a whole, making up much of what we now recognize as modernist architecture. In the same way that tuberculosis inspired new architectural styles, COVID-19 will likely lead architects to develop new designs that could lead to major changes in the field.