A House in PANdemIC !

Gearing up for a simple daily menial task like grocery shopping proved to be quite a challenge these days.

Let me bring you my step by step guide which eventually prompted the entry for today’s blog.

Firstly, before going out, I will made sure my hand wash is visible, waiting for me on my kitchen sink, which is the nearest to my front door. I will turn on the washing machine and opened the door for the washing machine so I can just put my cloth later without touching the handle after I come back. A new towel waiting for me by the laundry so I can get change and shower straight after.

I geared myself with covered shoes, a hat and my glasses and armed with a bottle of hand sanitizers, wet tissue, an overly priced PM2.5 mask and two set of toothpicks so I don’t have to touch the elevator button (for going down and back up respectively), I made my exit to the nearest walking distance store I can find.

Keeping my contact as minimal as I can, distancing myself and scratching out items on my list as fast as I can, I head back home and I had to wash my hands, change my cloth, shower and then clean the grocery items for extra precautions.

All and all, the extra steps and measure needed to be taken not to mention the pre planning needed because of how residential houses are plan as well as the floor layout of my home, took an extra 20 to 30 minutes out of my time.

With health pandemic occurring more in a century than ever before, with an average of 5 years for new discovered life threatening diseases, there is a possibility that the entire design community will have to adapt to the changing landscape of the demand in the future.

So, in world where a catastrophic pandemic is a norm, what would be an ideal house that can cater to that situation?

Vestibule

Most commonly known as mud rooms in the UK or a larger space known as Lobby in most middle eastern houses. A vestibule is a buffer space prior to entrance or usually describe as antechamber or small foyer leading into a larger space (Dictionary of Architecture and Construction,2005).

In the future full of pandemic this might be just the trend in most residential building or private houses. In that case, I expected that this space will be solely for sanitization purposes.

Viral image of husband showering outside after grocery shopping during Covid 19 outbreak in Kuala Lumpur.

Unconventional floor plan

Safe to say the addition of vestibule will change conventional floor plan of future houses and building. In addition, the entryway will also need to provide an extra space solely for storage of sanitization gear as well as PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) Suit. Additional laundry area with washing machine and dryer with connecting bath should also be near to the entrance for convenience.

Putting the kitchen, pantry and storage spaces to the front of the house nearer to ingress as well as connecting the kitchen to a food or supplies drop might be a good idea as people wouldn’t want to bring all the supplies across the house to the back like in conventional house and risk contaminating the whole house. Forget big car garage, spacious pantry for food storage and medicine would be the central design demand in this situation.

I have sketched the basic spatial organization of this pandemic house as below;

Distancing

Houses most likely be far apart from each other to minimize interaction or at least not connected with each other like the conventional terrace house. Residential building with shared common spaces like apartments probably would not be as convenient and eminent as in the present. As such, their demand might be dwindled. Designer will have to come out with high rise residential design that can minimize interaction for fear of mass infection.

Those with private houses will tend to have high outer walls for privacy and security with inner or back facing lawn with landscape to quench the boredom of feeling trapped inside. My guess, the society will be more introverted in nature and that will be reflected thru the building plans.

Airing & A.I

In situation where there is an outbreak of airborne virus, separate air filter system throughout the house must be made available at any moment. Since the advancing of virtual and cloud-based technology is expected to be the trend, these future houses might be controlled by A.I based intelligent that can detect any changes in air quality, or any harmful airborne diseases and threats around thus taking necessary counter actions.

Shutter doors and windows may serve as the first layer of protection for the building residents. Pneumatic trap doors as well as automatic shutter system that can be controlled with this A.I will be perfect for a pandemic ready future.

Extreme

In an extreme case, some home owners might even ought for an underground bunker or as simple as a Panic Room equipped to last for weeks under such threats. Waste by products can be turn into source of energy to generate electricity and produce sustainable crops.

This change of lifestyle is probably too far into the future. But, during 2003 SARS outbreak we told ourselves that we will prepare ourselves better for the next pandemic. It’s been almost 2 decades after that with science and technological advances are better than ever. Yet, here we are almost crippled by the latest Covid 19 and our mindset, our society even our response were more or less what it was years ago.