Inside out, exploring residential spaces during COVID-19 lockdown from the perspective of architecture students

Abstract

The new preventative measures that have emerged from the Coronavirus crisis brought about changes in different aspects of daily life. Some of these changes may have a significant impact on how the built environment is being experienced. The current paper examines reconfigurations that happened in residential spaces and space allocations for transitioned activities in a small case study targeting a group of architecture students in Cyprus. Analysis and findings are structured in three sections, indoor activities, special organization, and quality of life. The result shows blurring boundaries between public and private activities. In terms of spatial configuration, in-between spaces such as balconies and openings become central in designing residential units. Moreover, the study finds that the successful transition of work, education, exercise, and remote social interactions into the housing unit is the best predictor of reported quality of life under quarantine. It is unclear which parts of newly emerged measures will last even beyond the end of the pandemic; however, developing new insights into COVID-19’s impacts on living environments can help to introduce design responses that improve quality of life by creating better residential environments in the post-pandemic world where the remoteness of many daily activities is becoming the norm.

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