The Design Paradigm: How Covid-19 Is Already Changing Our Homes
By: Bob Hoebeke
2020. No one could have envisioned something as tiny as a microscopic germ paralyzing our world! For sure, biological warfare had been quietly discussed through the years, and contingencies have been proposed. But when the Covid-19 pandemic fell upon us, we weren’t prepared for the economic, or societal collapse which ensued.
Nowhere was the change more apparent than in our homes. Our children’s education was moved to the kitchen table; our offices have now taken up residence in the spare bedroom; grown children have moved home; and our elderly parents were either added to the household mix, or quarantined in their retirement community, where their only lifeline to friends and family is their telephone.
Author, and lecturer Stephen Covey would call this change a “paradigm shift,” but this one didn’t happen gradually, it happened overnight. In the blink of an eye, our world suddenly became different!
If it happened once what’s to keep it from happening again? Next time, we’d better be prepared! More than ever, our place of residence has become the nerve center for our lives and businesses. Anticipating the worst, here’s some food for thought on redesigning either your existing, or future residences:
Living Space
Shelter in Place has become code for “congregate together.” Most of us would like more space for more time together. Just last month the National Association of Homebuilders reported that the median single-family home square footage ticked up for the first time in years. The message is clear, we like being with our friends and family, we just don’t want to be on top of each other.
Besides more room for more people, the room shape should be considered, and most likely reconfigured to allow for more seating, and easier television viewing. Covid-19 may very well mean sporting events will have limited crowds, due to social distancing, or no crowds at all. But sports team owners will still have to pay over-inflated athlete salaries, so don’t be surprised if Pay per View becomes the norm. When you bring the arena/stadium into your living room, you’d better be able to accommodate the crowd that comes with it.
For some of us it’s not enough to just watch the athletes, we want to “be like Mike” and build our bodies to “look like Mike.” Covid-19 has already caused numerous fitness chains to close, so homes may need to be designed with space for workouts. Fitness gurus are already seeing the advantage of having their own equipment so they don’t run the risk of picking up a virus from a community piece of equipment.
All of this togetherness has created yet another design challenge — private space! It seems silly to be designing for more people/greater viewership while having to consider alone time. But let’s face it, Uncle Wendell can really get on your nerves after a while! Most would argue for a remote location, with a lock on the door — and a separate door to the outside for quick escapes. Quarantine has had that effect on a lot of people.
Something like 33% of all businesses have discovered that working remotely has actually been good for their employees. It’s not lost on companies either that home offices potentially reduce their office footprint, and thus overhead. Virtual conferencing, originally pioneered by Go to Meeting.com, and more recently Zoom, are revolutionizing the workspace by allowing collaboration without physical proximity. But, participants in a virtual conference can’t un-see what may be happening in the background of the virtual meeting. When thinking home office, we should not only concentrate on the function of the room, but also on creating a place which presents a pleasant background for virtual conferencing.
Schools are openly discussing Fall schedules where students might spend part of their day working at home in virtual classrooms. Could there be an argument for designing study carrels into modified home space?
Food Prep & Storage
No area of our homes got more of a workout during quarantine than our kitchens! A society that thrived on eating out and picking up … suddenly couldn’t. As grocery store shelves emptied, family and friends clogged the kitchen where food prep replaced take-out. Many have reported very healthy and pleasant interactions from working shoulder to shoulder chopping onions, but 10 weeks of togetherness brought up several design deficiencies:
- Most kitchens need more workspace. Too many cooks in the kitchen require more countertop space for putting meals together. Ideally cabinets should be 42″ apart for ease of heavier traffic flow.
- More food prep means greater refrigeration and freezing requirements. Refrigerators all across America are SCREAMING because they cannot handle the additional load that sheltering in place is demanding. Several manufacturers have started producing separate 30″ refrigerators, and 30″ freezers for maximum storage. A second Ref/Frz in the garage is also a popular solution.
- Feeding an army means storing away enough food to support the army. Most pantries are woefully inadequate to meet the needs of the expanded, quarantined family. Best designs have shelves which are relatively shallow (so you don’t lose cans towards the back), but plenty lineal feet of them.
- Once restaurants re-opened, drive-thru and take-out became our only home dine-in option. The well-equipped kitchen should include a warming drawer to slightly re-heat food that may have cooled off in transit.
Aside from adequately stocked and sized pantries, the recent run on toilet paper, and paper towels reminds us that our homes often don’t have enough bulk storage. A well-stocked bulk reservoir should probably include enough medical supplies so that trips to the hospital, which became non-existent with Coronavirus, can be kept to the absolute minimum.
Planning for the Elderly
Had we known that Covid-19 meant 12 weeks without being able to see my 95-year-old Mom, we would have made other arrangements for her care in our home. For centuries, the European model of shelter has been multi-generational living, all under the same roof. With an aging population, higher property costs, increasing property taxes and utilities, it’s not unreasonable to consider space and home accommodations for the elderly.
Ideally, aging family and friends would be accommodated on the first floor. Stairs are a problem, but if necessary, they should be designed to be a bit shallower. Planning for this will require a larger footprint because shallower steps will mean more of them. The elderly and disabled don’t just struggle with stairs, tripping over floor height transitions can be a problem. Plan to make all surfaces where older people will be traveling just as flat as possible to minimize risk of trip and fall.
Lots of little touches dramatically enhance the quality of life for the aging. Levers instead of knobs both on doors and plumbing fixtures reduce struggling if hands become arthritic. Decora panel light switches are easier to operate than toggle switches; wheelchairs can measure up to 32″ in width so doorways need to be sized accordingly; grab bars become a necessity in bathrooms and showers, so blocking the walls behind the sheetrock needs to become a consideration; and the list goes on endlessly!
No one could have possibly imagined the tectonic shift that a global pandemic has created in such a short period of time. :Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice,” well you know the rest! Now it’s your turn. The above-mentioned grocery list is designed to stimulate further discussion. How can we further improve so as to be prepared for the next time?
Bob Hoebeke is a 40-year veteran of the homebuilding and re-model business. As a consultant on many of the finest projects in the southwest, he sees it as his responsibility to bring best practices to all the projects on which he is privileged to work! bob@hoebekebuilders.com,