i + D - May/June 2020 - 31

Designing the Future - By Brian Libby

"You think of a home as a series of concentric circles, and each
circle as you move inside is a more and more private space,"
he says. "When you think about COVID-19, the threat is in
the outside world. So you need a de-contamination zone at the
entrance to your home. I see the mudroom becoming more
important as part of the entry sequence. Traditionally it would
be just before the kitchen in the back of the house. The front of
the house now needs something similar: a powder room nearby
and an area where things can be quarantined. That's going to be
important, I believe, forever."
For multi-unit living, Huntington thinks the key is to use design
to create a sense of ownership of shared spaces such as hallways
and passageways, where infection could spread. He cites one
study of a British public housing complex that found tenants were
less likely to clean pass-through spaces. But when passageways
became cul de sacs, blocked at one end, "the people living there
began to take ownership of that external space."
Sufficient space, as in the reception area at
IA Interior Architects' Toronto office, will serve to
make employees feel safe in a post-pandemic world.
(Image: Courtesy of IA Interior Architects)

Changing Workplaces
and Better Flow
In some ways, the Toronto office of IA Interior Architects had
a leg up on quarantine life and collaborating remotely. "We're a
global company," explains interior designer Beverly Horii, who
leads the Toronto team. Videoconferencing was already a regularity
when working with colleagues in London, Miami, or at the Denver
headquarters, and staff were free to work from home as needed.
Even so, the adjustment was still challenging. "We found it was
a cultural issue," she adds. "We missed that face-to-face."

Beverly Horii,
IA Interior Architects

This got the IA team thinking: With much of their projects on
hold, they set about creating a survey that asked questions about
working at home or in commercial offices in the future. They
received responses from 1,700 people across 28 countries, which
helped birth a series of conclusions. Would the open-office trend
dissipate in favor of more enclosed workstations? Not necessarily,
their research found. "Open offices give a variety of spaces: You
pick the space for the task at hand," she says. "One of the things
we found in our survey was while working from home, people
missed having that variety of settings."
Yet there is still likely to be a transformation of sorts, at least in
the short term, as shelter-in-place orders begin to be lifted but the
old normal has not returned. That could likely mean far fewer times
when the entire staff is at the office at once; therefore, fewer
workstations would be needed and they could be shared, while
collaborative spaces would take a higher percentage of square
footage. "I think the shift will happen to even more collaborative
settings," Horii explains. "It may be more of an attitudinal shift, but
you'll see those settings becoming more and more prevalent with
more variety to them, as we understand how people like to work."

i+D - May/June 2020

378_021_i+D_MayJune_v1.indd 31

A survey conducted by IA Interior
Architects found open and communal
spaces will continue to be important
in the future of office design.
(Image: Courtesy of IA Interior Architects)

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i + D - May/June 2020

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