How the Coronavirus Has Reshaped Architecture

There is no doubt that the last three years of living through a pandemic have changed the way we live as we all had to adapt to a new norm of working, living, studying, and entertaining. 

With the flexible working and studying requirements came a desire for people to live in more flexible spaces that allow for both parents to work from home without taking away from the communal living spaces while still providing the separation between the spaces.

An example of this is renovating the interior layout of an old bungalow to add a new guest bedroom that also doubles as a home office for one parent and a simple shuffle of the bathroom layout resulting in a small additional home office nook for the other parent.

Another example of the change in design and requirements because of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the pressure on the supply chain of certain products and has highlighted the need for selecting and working with locally supplied materials where possible as well as re-purposing of existing material to be used in the new design allowing for less reliance on new materials and the international supply chain.

Understandably because of this office buildings and offices spaces have had to change to keep up with the ever-changing demand and flexible working conditions, with a focus on offering the staff a smooth transition between working from home to working from the office, allowing them to plug in and go no matter where they are.

We are seeing more and more clients asking for a way to utilize the space they currently have to provide a more flexible living and working environment with minimal or no change to the footprint of the house, due to wanting to keep costs down or due to site coverage or other planning restrictions.  Be engaging a planner, structural engineer and a builder early in the design stage we can help our clients make the right decision for their brief and budget, often finding out early in the design stage what is achievable before committing to further design and documentation costs.