Designing for the post-Covid home
Everyone is shushing each other at home these days. I hear this from many of my clients and I am not sure that this admonition will go away any time soon.
I was recently asked to enclose rooms in a home with an open-concept design for sound control. They are specialist physicians operating from home with three school-age children all taking online classes at the same time – hence the shushing.
The functioning requirements of home will not be the same post-Covid. With faster internet connectivity on the horizon, we will continue to conduct business, shop, run a household, be entertained and educated from home suggesting the need for dedicated spaces to operate from.
I’m an advocate of a small home-hub office space with proximity to the kitchen and main floor laundry room to bounce from changing a load of laundry, to a call with a client, to making a quick meal. It’s also a space where we pay bills, research health and food preparation, email, and arrange family activities in addition to supervising homework, running a small business, and shopping online. It’s life! And we will not want all this happening from the kitchen table in this home/business/school/gym/movie theatre world we are living in.
The former part-time home office is now full time and it needs a sound proof door. Sit / stand desks are the rage, along with bookcases or staged walls for on screen backdrops. Unless you like looking like you are streaming from Mars, take heed, folks can’t help judging your décor.
New home clients are trading off living rooms for covered rear porches with fireplaces to extend the season outdoors. Kid bedrooms include proper schoolwork desks with many clients moving away from basement offices – my husband calls his, “The salt mine.” Secret pantries behind cabinet elevations are popular along with small second or catering kitchens. The concealed kitchen is great for home entertaining which will explode post-Covid.
I encourage clients to examine spaces to see what can be reclaimed. When looking for a spot for a built-in desk consider under the stairs. Partitioning off large mechanical rooms or storage rooms can create a place for work or crafts. The former basement home office can be converted to a home-gym for that shiny new Peloton bike. Fitness trainers will be online so we will need a home gym.
A good designer is a problem-solver, artist, curator, and a sometimes marriage therapist who can easily move from one role to the other and is not afraid of change. The adept designer will study how a family spends time in the home to better understand their lifestyle requirements. It is no longer just about space planning and beautiful interior furnishings and more about problem solving and creating functioning spaces that will work for everyone in the way we will live in the future.
Chris McKenzie is an architectural designer based in Creemore and Oakville.
