working space

What we thought was our refuge from the outside world is now very much a part of it, and the landscape of existing office space will change as well. What does this mean to our homes, our neighborhoods, and to our communities? 

A few days before schools and offices closed in March, families around the world started to rearrange their homes to provide for the anticipated overlapping uses. Many people in the US live in houses that are large enough to accommodate the repurposing, albeit with some impact on noise and privacy. But a large number of people, those in smaller houses or apartments, or those with larger families, have faced difficulties.[1] Most people here in Switzerland live in apartments that were not designed to provide quiet workspaces for multiple people, certainly not for parents and kids all home together. 

My kids are out of the house, but I did work from home when they were small so I know how frustrating it is to work on the dining table with a curious three-year-old who enjoys rearranging documents. Add trying to supervise a six-year-old’s schoolwork on the same table, and you have a precarious situation. I have spoken to young parents doing just this. What has saved some of them is access to extra space - an attic mansard room or a small office cum guest room. These are now the video conference room, the math homework room, and the emergency retreat. But I know other parents who are still at the kitchen table or on the sofa, ignoring chaos as elegantly as possible. Some are happier working at home, citing increased flexibility, autonomy and paperless efficiency, while others can’t wait to get out of the house. 

These solutions, of course, assume internet accessibility and adequate equipment. Some Swiss schools provided children who needed them with laptops or tablets. But many schools in the US have struggled to accommodate students with no access to the internet. Communities have had to become creative to assure internet access in some needy neighborhoods.[2]

The pandemic will not magically disappear. A number of design problems thus need to be addressed. The first is to incorporate space for work and study into standard residential floorplans. In an attempt to minimize the living area per person, some cooperative housing projects in Switzerland have created flexible rooms for short-term use. These rooms, with separate entrances and scattered through the development,  can be used as guest rooms for visitors, home office space, or even as temporary bedrooms for teenagers. Of course, such spaces are in high demand now, and will remain so until people return to offices and other workplaces. Residential design needs to incorporate more flexibility like this, and quickly. 

Working from home has generated a second set of design problems in and around our former workplaces. The modern windowless open office landscape with hard surfaces and poor airflow now seems to have been purposefully designed to harbor and circulate unseen pathogens. Workspaces need to be rethought to reconfigure circulation and allow for greater physical distance between workers.[3] A friend who works in facilities planning told me her offices are drastically cutting workspace while implementing separation strategies. And, in light of all the people still working from home some have asked whether we will even need office buildings in the future.[4] 

Fewer people going to work will have huge implications for urban and business centers. Though I doubt this bodes the end of cities as we know them, cities will need to adapt transportation infrastructure and create more outdoor dining and green spaces, measures that would complement sustainability goals.[5]  Many cities like London and Athens increased their bike lanes at the start of the lockdown,[6] and there are plans to go even further. The mayor of Paris has vowed to turn Paris into a “15-minute city”[7] where residents can work, shop, learn, and relax entirely within their own neighborhoods. Greener, quieter, and less congested cities might even counteract a trend that has some people fleeing cities for the perceived safety of suburbs.[8] 

I wonder whether it is possible to organize an office-space swap; offices currently empty in one neighborhood might be used by local residents as alternative offices. This way, we could work remotely from well-outfitted workspaces near our homes.[9] 

A final design problem I will briefly address here is school design. Parents have learned a lot about their children’s schooling during these last few months. They have more respect for teachers and have gained a sense of how active kids actually are during the school day. But children need to be in school with other children. A recent editorial in the New York Times underscores the importance of reopening schools as soon as possible. To increase both physical distance and fresh air circulation, among other things it proposes moving some classrooms outside. Many countries have been experimenting  for years with outdoor “woodland” kindergartens, and the results have been positive.[10] Perhaps now is the time to extend the experiment to primary school as well.