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The Role of Design in a World of Perpetual Pandemics
Call it a panic. Call it a pandemic. It doesn't matter whether you believe this year's novel Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, is just a small bump in the road or will indeed be the end of us all. The fact remains that pandemics will, and already are, becoming as commonplace as severe weather events and other natural disasters. The rapid rise and decline of SARS in 2003 may have just been a warning. COVID-19 and it's swift, seemingly inevitable march across the world is a sign that globalized diseases are here to stay. Indeed, I believe that we now live in an age of perpetual pandemic. Governments and tech billionaires probably won't save us, but the architects and designers of our shared built environments and cities just might - if we can get our act together.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared COVID-19 a true global pandemic. It's official; the disease is now worldwide. Secretly, however, we all knew Coronavirus was already a pandemic.
So what does pandemic mean?
Part of the rationale behind the WHO declaration can be summed up in their own words. They correctly note "alarming levels of spread and severity, and... alarming levels of inaction". No doubt, the spread and severity of COVID-19 cannot be denied. There are now over 125,000 cases worldwide in 117 countries. But what's particularly interesting in the development of the disease isn't it's scale or scope, or even the death toll. Instead, it's the "alarming levels of inaction" from oblivious individuals to governing bodies who have allowed the disease to spread and propagate the world over.
In the absence of effective global policy, who should we look to for solutions? Should we sit on our hands and wait for years for pharmaceutical companies to develop, stockpile, and distribute a miracle vaccine? Should we call for draconian and punitive travel restrictions? Should we resign ourselves to a world of perpetual pandemic and hide away in our isolated quarters? What I am asking is this: why isn't anyone looking to us, the architects and designers of the world's built environments and cities for solutions? And, why haven't we taken any responsibility for our collective failure to protect public health, safety, and welfare in the first place?
Perhaps the answer to the first question is quite simple. People do not look to us for solutions because we do not provide any - so far. However, that has not always historically been the case.
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
Failure By Design: Taking Responsibility for Public Health, Safety, & Welfare
At the turn of the 20th century, societal diseases were just a fact of life. Tuberculosis, polio, measles, mumps, and hundreds of other dire illnesses ran rampant through poorly regulated tenements and wealthy enclaves alike. It didn't matter if you were rich or poor. (Although the poor suffered most.) There was a high likelihood that anyone of any station would get a communicable disease and die from it. Let's not forget that the 1918 Spanish Flu may have been responsible for as many as 100 million deaths worldwide. In the face of endemic disease, society took action to combat illnesses through the built environment with architects, designers, and urban planners leading at the forefront of this fight. The Garden City, City Beautiful, and modernist movements grew in part out of this desire to solve public health problems with design solutions. We replaced teetering tenements with new building typologies designed to maximize light and ventilation. We lobbied for municipal ordinances and regulations to limit overcrowding and maintain sanitation. We designed entire cities around promoting the public health, safety, and welfare. The public sphere was something we took very seriously and something we intended to promote and protect.
That's not always the case today.
This article takes a somewhat critical view of the role of design in the age of perpetual pandemic. Many architects and designers who do not practice in the healthcare sector do not seriously consider the potential for their designs, plans, and layouts to become vectors for diseases. Yet the spread of disease can occur anywhere and everywhere, whether it be homes, at the office, or in a public venue. The built environment is everywhere, and it is our collective responsibility to design places and spaces that are not only aesthetically pleasing, sustainable, and financially responsible, but one that promotes and protects the health of the public as well.
Unfortunately, we do not always design with the public welfare in mind, which is now leading to some uncomfortable contradictions.
Johnson Wax Offices
Case Study: The Emblematic Open Office
Let's not beat about the bush; the typical modern open floor plan as perceived by the general public as problematic. The perception of the modern open office isn't great. This in turn can reflect poorly on us. That's not to say that there aren't successful examples of open office designs in the world today. The reality is quite the opposite. There are plenty of great, dynamic office spaces that delight the senses, exude creativity, and create a sense of place. Just look at Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Offices, which launched the very idea of an open office floor plan into the mainstream. However, there are also a great many examples of terrible office environments characterized by a sea of desks and endless monotony. For this discussion, I want to isolate the typical open office plan because it has become a symbol in the public eye. Let's talk about why the typical open office plan, the emblematic open office with endless rows of desks and cubicles, is exemplary of how architects and interior designers have failed in the eyes of the public and the eyes of some of our clients.
"In order to be creative, you must first question everything." So let's start by asking one essential question: Are open office floor plans working as intended from the perspective of users?
The research suggests that the typical open office typology simply isn't working as we intended.
The primary selling point (emphasis on "selling") of the open floor plan concept has always been its impact on a client's bottom line. In theory, the open floor plan is supposed to improve communication through radical transparency, thereby streamlining in-office interactions and boosting worker productivity. Any cost savings realized as a result of squeezing more workers into tighter and tighter spaces, and the reduction in construction costs and FF&E, is just a bonus to the bottom line. In essence, we promised businesses that they could have their cake and eat it too. They could save money by reducing their office footprint and buildout costs while also goosing employee productivity.
Unfortunately, it seems like that claim isn't totally right. According to the venerable Harvard Business Review (HBR), firms that switched to an open office concept saw face-to-face interactions fall by 70 percent. Although the typical open office was designed to facilitate face-to-face communication, it actually "gave people permission" to ignore their peers more. Accidental collisions designed to spark cross-pollination and collaboration ended up being counterproductive. Finally, copresence in digital channels and chat rooms did not result in higher rates of collaboration or increased productivity. In conclusion, HBR did not find the open floor plan typology to be any better from a business perspective than what came before it.
If a business case cannot be made for the typical open office concept, then what is driving such rapid growth and adoption?
The answer is simple; it often costs less initially to implement a typical open floor plan. That’s not to say that all open floor designs are bad. On the contrary, properly designed, implemented, and commissioned office spaces are proven to improve worker satisfaction and productivity. According to the Gensler US Workplace Survey 2020, “mostly open environments provide the best opportunity for autonomy and innovation”. However there exists in the public perception a cognitive gap between what the open office concept purports to offer and what they actually experience in some office spaces. There are too many spaces that are under-performing.
Even worse, those under-performing spaces can be bad for employee health and wellbeing.
Herein lies the root of our true failure as architects and designers. In conceiving of the typical modern open floor plan office, we never gave any consideration to the health costs associated with an open office arrangement. We never took the public health, safety, and welfare into account. We were so enamored by the language of business metrics and productivity, the language of capital, that we forgot or refused to see to the needs of the actual occupants. As early as 2014, journalists were already reporting the negative health impacts of open offices. Study after study showed a "significant association with office type" in regards to disease transmission. As we packed more and more workstations into smaller and smaller spaces, we unintentionally recreated 19th-century tenement conditions only with standing desks and kombucha taps. Our flexible, agile seating schemes only accelerated and exacerbated the rate of in-office infections as sick workers moved from one desk to another.
While it would be absurd to blame designers for the rapid rise and spread of COVID-19, we do bear some responsibility. The lack of design solutions for COVID-19 is just a symptom of a broader attitude in the industry that seems to think that preventing pandemics through the built environment isn't in our job description. It's not that we are actively designing buildings to transmit diseases; it's that we aren't actively doing anything to stop or even slow them. We aren't incorporating creative, health resilience solutions into our design thinking.
This lack of vision is a colossal failure on our part. Once we take into account the dramatic increase in sick-days and sinking worker productivity, many open floor plan projects may come out as a net negative on our clients' balance sheets. And that's not something they will readily forget.
Why isn't anyone looking to us, the architects and designers of the world's built environments and cities for solutions? Because sometimes we just don’t think about it. It’s not actively on the agenda. In our failure to take action on COVID-19, we are doing both our clients and the public a grave disservice that only makes them trust us less.
Great open office designs are possible!
Why Isn't anyone Looking to Design?
While the rest of the world wrings its hands and settles into either resigned acceptance or puts all their hopes in the next vaccine, there's plenty of hope and opportunity for architects and designers to create a built environment that is both resilient and resistant to pandemic diseases. We can be a part of the solution, not just idle spectators.
Simple, straightforward solutions such as smart fixtures and improved ventilation are a great place to start. We can also create thoughtfully arranged open floor plan concepts that take health resilience into account. We can create better workplace strategies. We can design cities that alleviate overcrowding. Whatever we decide to do, we need to take the lessons offered by the rapid rise of COVID-19 and incorporate them into the way we design our interiors, buildings, public spaces, and urban environments. This isn't a calling; this is quite literally our jobs.
In an era of social distancing, can we build buildings and design spaces that bring people together without transmitting diseases? Can we create efficient places of work that don't pack workers in like sardines? Can we incorporate materials that actively block disease transmission?
As architects and designers, we can offer these solutions to our clients and to the world. We can play pivotal roles in the prevention and containment of deadly pandemics before they even start, and in doing so, re-earn a seat at the table when it comes to identifying future solutions that benefit humanity.