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HOW DID COVID-19 CHANGE THE INTERIOR DESIGN?
HOW DID COVID-19 CHANGE THE INTERIOR DESIGN?

The Covid-19 pandemic has a massive impact on how we live our daily routine and social life. In the process of the pandemic we saw what was impossible once; has suddenly become possible. We have found ourselves in a position where we have to reconsider everything to fight the threat. If the quarantine has brought something positive into our lives, it is the opportunity to rearrange our daily routines and take up new activities that we did not have time before. It is time to rethink our life and subsistence. How will we adjust to these challenging times?

As offices have been shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, working at home has become the new normal. This provides an awareness of yearning to work together. As the world is slowly getting back to the routines, everyone adapts to the new realities. Imposing drastic adjustments to our lives, the coronavirus has introduced a “new normal” by changing our perceptions and altering our priorities. What will the new normal look like? Now it is time to find out!

A global pandemic can change the way you look at the things. As the most places are closed nowadays, people stay at home and maintain the social distancing. We have found ourselves in the search of new rules and rituals that should be adapted to every space.

It is crucial for us to be able to interact with nature within public spaces like the parks. They provide opportunities for the community to engage and socialize with each other as well as they accommodate different entertainment and leisure activities such as picnics, concerts, or sports events. The point is public spaces such as parks are the fundamental part of how we socialize while keeping the distance. Park designs will be impacted by coronavirus pandemic. For a quick solution, the grass of parks around the world has been painted with white circles to encourage the public to stay within a safe distance from each other during this period.




How modern interior design is adapting to the changes brought on by the pandemic?

As everybody around the world faces the realities of self-isolation, we are waiting for a new beginning. Some architecture firms have outlined how hotels could be adapted to allow social distancing when they reopen and how future designs will be impacted by coronavirus pandemic. Let’s see the solutions of modern interior design…


Hotel Design

Hotels will be adapted to minimise the interaction between the staff and the guests by using the smartphones for the contactless check-in. To reduce the contact between the guests during the check-out, it should be one-way system in the corridors. In the long term, it is believed that this term will impact how space is located in hotels, with comfortably spacious rooms and a reduction in facilities like conference rooms and gyms. Lifts are the biggest challenge; sharing a space with strangers even with masks, will be hard. It is inevitable that maybe more lifts might be helpful, but a creative re-thinking is necessary. We will see what kind of new ideas will come up from architecture firms regarding the hotel common areas and the hotel room design.  


Luxury Cafe Design and Luxury Restaurant Design

At any time drinking and eating together is a way to connect people. Nowadays it is a rapidly changing context. What are the challenges the food and beverage sectors facing now? In the given circumstances for restaurants, modern interior design has proposed a concept to help to allow diners after the pandemic. As an extreme example one of them is a French designer Christophe Gernigon who has designed suspended plexiglass hoods intended to have dinner together. Shaped like large lampshades, the transparent Plex’eat hoods would be suspended above tables. People sit next to each other with the hoods potentially reducing the risk of airborne infection. Tables should be spread out to meet the recommended two meters space. Higher barriers may also provide an alternative to the necessary distancing rule. 


High End Office Design

When you close your eyes for a moment and imagine the perfect workplace environment, How good is your dream? Or how is your prediction of post-Covid19 offices might look like? Before the pandemic times, many of us used to spend more time at the offices and also see colleagues more than our families. Therefore, offices can be considered as our second home. In these days, many architecture firms and research groups are redefining our workplaces. 


What does modern interior design offer for the workspaces?

A London-based architecture firm has outlined redesign strategies for offices, with transparent screens around desks and hand-free doors to allow employees to safely return to their offices following this term. 



It is critical that everyone maintains the distance between each other so setting a transparent separator on every worktable is a basic solution. Meetings should be placed in open areas rather than enclosed meeting rooms as far as possible. Windows can be opened during the working hours to increase the ventilation. Installing voice activation or hands-free controls that reduce the need to contact commonly touched items is important. Removing rubbish bins from individual desks and replace them with a communal location is needed. Instead of meeting in the lunchroom, co-workers should use the room at different times.

Some of us feel great about moving out of the home and getting back to kind of normality but some of us has concerns about it. We all need to be mindful and get used to the new level of flexible working. All of these examples are given for to be an idea for everybody’s self “new normal”. Certainly, there will be more research and ideas deeply. Future will change, whether we focus on it or not. So, this strange time presents us an opportunity. Let’s keep distancing and seize these special moments. It is good to know that modern interior design does have solutions, and architecture firms are working on creating safer spaces. It seems we will have a new normal in high end restaurant design, luxury café design, hotel room design and high end office design.

written by Hande Gönüllü

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