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    Redesigning The Office To Maximize Health

    Architects are already looking beyond COVID-19 to imagine the office of 2025 and beyond — an office that will keep us safe on the job, whatever pandemic virus strikes next.
    by Emily Vaughn Sep 14, 2020 6 minutes
    Architects say making the office more like the outdoors — with filtered air and good ventilation — will be a priority post-pandemic. This living wall in the Danielle N. Ripich Commons at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, is one such approach.

    Office designers are scrambling now to try to get more members of the workforce safely back to their desks. Clear plastic sneeze guards have become familiar, as have floors taped off at 6-foot increments. But by 2025 or so, after the immediate threat of the coronavirus has likely passed, which short-term fixes will be part of the new normal? And what other design changes could be coming our way?

    While the scale of the current pandemic is new, the need for architects to prioritize human health is not, says Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, director of the Institute for Health in the Built Environment. "We've designed buildings for 100-year floods," he says. "Now we have to learn to design for the 100-year flu."

    "There will be another epidemic or another pandemic — or there might just be another flu season," says Eve Edelstein, co-founder of the research-based design consultancy Clinicians for Design. "Let's go ahead and design for that reality."

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