Covid-19 is impacting on all our lives. For many of us, there was a ‘normal’ daily routine, involving the occupants of the house leaving it and going either to school or the workplace, returning later in the day to continue our personal lives. Lockdown has rooted us in our homes, requiring us to re-think how we use space and how that best reflects our management of our work and private lives. 

This re-assessment of ‘home’ should be seen as an opportunity to think about how we design homes for the future and a review of the standards that we currently design to. Add in the need to search for a sustainable approach to building and living, and this becomes a moment at which we could make design improvements, previously considered unviable, the ‘new normal’ and the way forward for residential developments. 

If people continue to work primarily from home and more decide to home school (or are forced to with local outbreaks), our homes will continue to be under immense pressure. Different typologies of people use their homes in different ways – single occupants through to flat sharers, young families through to multi-generational occupiers and first-time buyers through to retirees. There will be many different pressures to consider. 

The biggest drivers of home design become access to external space (either private or public amenity), adaptability of the spaces within, sustainable ways of building (and using), access to IT infrastructure, and a real need for our housing design to improve health and wellbeing. 

The questions for the design team, the developer and the local planning authority then become: Do we reshape the way we arrange the internal space and challenge current assumptions on unit size? How do we design homes that appeal to the home-worker/home-schooler? With a potential significant reduction in the demand for various types of space, do we need to redefine the use groups for those buildings or parts of our towns and cities? Should our facades and MEPH systems evolve to provide better levels of daylight, ventilation and air quality? And finally, are there issues with material availability and build programmes that need to be considered? 

The standards that we currently design to have exposed the lack of flexibility when having to work and school from home. Many have had to use dining room tables as classrooms and ironing boards as desks over the last few months.

The obvious answer is to increase the area of our homes – but in doing so, we will impact on the viability of schemes. Larger units mean fewer homes, lower density, less efficiency, increased cost per unit and therefore decreasing a scheme’s viability. 

An alternative answer could be that as with the provision of adaptable and accessible units, a percentage of the homes delivered in each development are increased in size to provide the flexibility to hive off a home office and/or place to home school. Could this unit type be considered as a new typology – a 1B2P plus? The idea being that it is important for our health and wellbeing that we are able to leave work or school behind and enjoy our time at home. Separate areas and spaces will aid that.

We must also consider designing smarter, rather than larger, dwellings. Specifying components such as Velux windows that can change into Juliet balconies, or components such as the Bloomframe window that can transform from a window into a balcony at the touch of a button. The use of these components can give a sense of space, access to the outdoors and increase wellbeing without adding square footage. Floor to floor heights could also be increased to offer the option of inserting a mezzanine floor. Simpler creative storage solutions can also be incorporated such as moveable walls. 

The other big issue is whether Covid has fundamentally changed what makes a development attractive to a purchaser or potential tenant. So rather than looking for a home close to a transport line, are people more interested in homes with superfast broadband? Rather than looking to be in the middle of a bustling city, are people more concerned with access to amenities including outdoor and work spaces?

How can we design intelligently to offer a reduction in the number of surfaces we touch in communal areas? Incorporating elements like apps to call lifts and open building doors into our designs and management plans, for example.

One solution to increase appeal is to provide communal amenity space typically found within PRS developments and incorporate them in all residential developments. This new ‘work hub’ could generate revenue by providing rentable meeting rooms or areas for home working and enable ‘office working’ from home. Businesses could also use these as meeting areas through an app booking system. Could our employers share the cost of accessing this space when used if it helps to increase productivity? The location of the work hub can offer benefit too, overlooking open space or by offering informal natural surveillance of the building entrance. And aspects of it might be multifunctional to further extend the contribution it can make.

This may be a more sustainable option than increasing the size of homes and may not have as big an impact on viability.

As we continue to work from home, businesses are reassessing the quantum of space that they require as flexible working arrangements may become the new norm. Businesses therefore are looking at consolidating office space and amalgamating satellite offices into regional hubs. Unused commercial buildings could start appearing across the country. With the permitted development rights in place, office to residential conversions could pick up in numbers. If this is the case, should guidance be produced to regulate the quality of these developments, over and above the recent announcement that new homes delivered through Permitted Development Rights will have to meet National Described Spaces Standards? Planning and impact on the economy and character of these areas will need to be considered. 

As discussed above, we are now spending more time at home than ever before and this places greater emphasis on the need to adequately ventilate our homes and avoid overheating. When you look across the different typologies of homes this is more easily achieved in some than others. TM52 and the recent update to TM59 is there to ensure that this isn’t an issue in apartment blocks for a specified percentage of the year. However, with people spending more time at home through the summer months, this will get tested. Façade designs may need to evolve. We may see a drive towards higher levels of ventilation. Again, this isn’t a straightforward discussion as it will need to be balanced with façade cost and other technical requirements such as daylight and acoustic performance. 

Finally, Covid has had an impact on the ability of manufacturers to produce the materials that we need to build. Whilst most businesses have started production, social distancing is impacting on the volume of their output. In other areas, sub-contractors and specialists are going into administration due to a lack of work. This has a potential knock-on impact to build cost, build programmes and potentially sales prices. 

There’s no doubt that Covid has changed how we understand and appreciate our homes. We need buildings that help us meet the demands of balancing our personal and work lives like never before. 

Sustainability and technological drivers were already in play. Covid has been the event that offers the accelerator for change – the question is, should we be re-evaluating some of the standards that we use to design our homes. After all, we all need to live in them.