Positive Energy engineers Michael Walker and Kristof Irwin explore how we can approach the design of public building types so they can be more adaptive in extreme situations like the Coronavirus pandemic. Great article, and worth a read.
Ours is the indoor generation. We spent the vast majority of our lives in indoor environments of our own making. What if these environments were viewed as highly functional systems to provide for human health, comfort and well-being? This was where the societal conversation existed when it ran into a head-on collision with the Novel Coronavirus pandemic. At this point, we find ourselves at a profound inflection point, ruminating on what will change in our society as we move forward.
At Positive Energy, we have been advocating for healthier homes for over a decade. Now we want to expand our thinking and explore other areas of impact, but with a continued focus on healthy outcomes for occupants. Recently, we’ve been thinking about how architecture and engineering teams can innovate the design approach to public buildings.
How can we approach the design of public building types so they can be more adaptive in extreme situations like the one we’re in now? Imagine a paradigm wherein public buildings are designed with programming changes in mind, ready to accommodate our communities’ needs in public health emergencies. For example, we are currently experiencing a shortage of hospital facilities across the country in the midst of the global Novel Coronavirus pandemic, and for the same reasons we have many empty schools sitting idle, unused. Read full article>>
*Photo by Samuel Scalzo on Unsplash