Pandemic Covid-19 affected our livelihood, whether it’s mental health, education, trade, and profession; Architecture education too has no escape. Architectural institutions are taking their activities online as COVID-19 forces them to consider replacing real-world interactions with virtual alternatives. We are a physical being and our learning spaces are designed for that moving, exploring, and encounter. Will it change the paradigm of architecture education.
And what about practice???.. Do you think our design strategies will change???
Pashmeena Vikramjit Ghom this is an important question you are asking. Most contributions received focus on one aspect: the education on the topic of architecture, and the modalities of teaching and learning.
I would like to raise another aspect of your question: teach and learn an architecture which has to be different if it wants to address "living in the pandemic era".
The design of living spaces, from the bedroom, the apartment, its facilities, the houses, the streets, the buildings and desirably attached gardens, all this is now seen with new eyes.
The new architects being trained now will have to answer the questions of those living through the pandemic:
-(1) what apartment have you designed for me?
It's turning to a nightmare: three to five, six persons sharing an apartment, one toilet, one bathroom. How can the occupiers deal with one of them being contaminated? If people share meals, it is enough to share 6 meals (two days) for everybody to have a probability of more than 90% to be contaminated too...
The living hell of the closed spaces not designed to provide privacy/face isolation needs of infectious people in the household. The architects will bear the responsibility for what will be seen as a structural design fault, the next time a pandemic happens. Statistics show that virus death rates are higher in less wealthy parts of one city, where people cannot isolate, cannot have a separate bathroom for infected/not infected occupiers.
-(2) what open air space have you designed for me?
I know of people forced to live alone in an apartment, and not go out (elderly persons), with no virus-safe access to a balcony or a garden, just to be outside for a few minutes. This will be seen as a negative feature of a housing project if it misses some building access to a safe garden, where people can stretch their legs, and breath outdoors every day, during lockdown times.
I know people who have a city apartment and a country house, even a small one. Many of them escaped the city. Doing so they propagated the virus to places less at risk before they arrived. This is irresponsible behaviour, going outside cities, bringing virus risk, bringing further pressure on rural hospitals not dimensioned for such influx of part-time residents, whereas city hospitals have suitable infrastructure for the inhabitants of the city.
The fault is to ill-designed buildings, ill-designed cities.
-(3) Have you thought of urban designs robust to the pandemic?
You want people to be able to walk safely, with needed social distancing supported by floor marking (which can be creative and styled), grocery shop and pharmacy shop access, where standing lines is reasonable (think of too much sun, too much rain on a line of people waiting, think of social distance allowance).
-(4) What is a post-pandemic work place?
I will not go into details, but there is indoor design and outdoor design, technical aspects, decoration, artistic aspects.
This is true for a factory as well as for an office. Work places will have to be robust to pandemic, support the needs of workers and organisations.
I have just highlighted 4 areas, where Architectural Education will need to provide answer. There is no guilt for today's architects not to have designed for pandemic robustness. There will be a guilt for tomorrow's architects if they don not learn from the pandemic, and address the needs which have materialised clearly.
I hope this helps
COVID19 will change a lot. There are publications appearing on the internet on the future of universities. Universities can follow several strategies, depending on their rankings and student populations they try to attract.
We will give more importance to online teaching methods. Romanian universities are already preparing to complete online bachelor's and master's degrees.
Pashmeena Vikramjit Ghom this is an important question you are asking. Most contributions received focus on one aspect: the education on the topic of architecture, and the modalities of teaching and learning.
I would like to raise another aspect of your question: teach and learn an architecture which has to be different if it wants to address "living in the pandemic era".
The design of living spaces, from the bedroom, the apartment, its facilities, the houses, the streets, the buildings and desirably attached gardens, all this is now seen with new eyes.
The new architects being trained now will have to answer the questions of those living through the pandemic:
-(1) what apartment have you designed for me?
It's turning to a nightmare: three to five, six persons sharing an apartment, one toilet, one bathroom. How can the occupiers deal with one of them being contaminated? If people share meals, it is enough to share 6 meals (two days) for everybody to have a probability of more than 90% to be contaminated too...
The living hell of the closed spaces not designed to provide privacy/face isolation needs of infectious people in the household. The architects will bear the responsibility for what will be seen as a structural design fault, the next time a pandemic happens. Statistics show that virus death rates are higher in less wealthy parts of one city, where people cannot isolate, cannot have a separate bathroom for infected/not infected occupiers.
-(2) what open air space have you designed for me?
I know of people forced to live alone in an apartment, and not go out (elderly persons), with no virus-safe access to a balcony or a garden, just to be outside for a few minutes. This will be seen as a negative feature of a housing project if it misses some building access to a safe garden, where people can stretch their legs, and breath outdoors every day, during lockdown times.
I know people who have a city apartment and a country house, even a small one. Many of them escaped the city. Doing so they propagated the virus to places less at risk before they arrived. This is irresponsible behaviour, going outside cities, bringing virus risk, bringing further pressure on rural hospitals not dimensioned for such influx of part-time residents, whereas city hospitals have suitable infrastructure for the inhabitants of the city.
The fault is to ill-designed buildings, ill-designed cities.
-(3) Have you thought of urban designs robust to the pandemic?
You want people to be able to walk safely, with needed social distancing supported by floor marking (which can be creative and styled), grocery shop and pharmacy shop access, where standing lines is reasonable (think of too much sun, too much rain on a line of people waiting, think of social distance allowance).
-(4) What is a post-pandemic work place?
I will not go into details, but there is indoor design and outdoor design, technical aspects, decoration, artistic aspects.
This is true for a factory as well as for an office. Work places will have to be robust to pandemic, support the needs of workers and organisations.
I have just highlighted 4 areas, where Architectural Education will need to provide answer. There is no guilt for today's architects not to have designed for pandemic robustness. There will be a guilt for tomorrow's architects if they don not learn from the pandemic, and address the needs which have materialised clearly.
I hope this helps
In the United States in 2007, the average living space in housing units was about 164 square meters, located mainly in wide metropolises. Half of all apartments available in the country were equipped with two bathrooms.
In Germany, apartments are half the size and are located in densely populated urban areas. The results of the fight against coronavirus are different and depend not on the density of residence but on the quality of the housing stock and the method of its redistribution.
The addiction of modern architects to visual effects and a detachment from understanding the life of the population can lead to the fact that the subsequent generations of architects will be disgusted the method of “virtual thinking in design”. Onсe in the history of architecture it happened when the esthetic eclecticism was rejected by modernists on the beginning XX.
as most of the fields adjusting for the new normal, architecture field is not an exception, i suppose...
The reality of the new didactic space, classroom, educative interaction ...!
I hope for the work at home for architecture industry, where reducing waste of time used for transportation while going to work and also cutting the travelling expenses.
Dear Goodluck. If the architectural work consisted only in creating the geometry of the building on material carriers, you would be right. However, most part of the architect’s work is in direct contact with materials and people. Therefore, architectural education has never been and never will be completely remote. The idea that the object of the architect’s work is blueprints for builders arose in the Renaissance, but this does not mean that the architect’s activity comes down to this.
Volodomyr Durmanov agreed that architectural education has never been and never will be completely remote but technology-based teaching-learning methods have become compulsory in the current scenario.
Goodluck JOSHUA Mwakatumbula agreed about the waste of time for traveling and environmental benefits like reduced greenhouse gas emissions, decreased consumption of fossil fuels, lessened impact on infrastructure but not all the students have a high-speed broadband or specialist computer.
How do we respond? how do we adapt to this life? It has become important to keep students occupied and supported. We don't know whether COVID-19 is a transient phenomenon or will follow its natural course and become a long-term phenomenon, but circumstances like these warrant a new educational paradigm where knowledge acquisition and skill acquisition should not stop!
Dear Pashmeena, The main task of any education is to become a professional, which it means finding to solve important problems that arise in a person or society. A professional military, policemen, doctor, lawyer and architect will be in demand when their level of knowledge and skills allows people to use their services and pay for their education. Although there is another point of view that you must to save yourself, protect yourself, be treated and build yourself alone. If an architect does not find work today, then his knowledge does not satisfy the nowadays demand. Therefore, many architects dispensed with architectural education as they learned to do this in practice.
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